


Dragonfly

by lvckyphan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fanfiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8219992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lvckyphan/pseuds/lvckyphan
Summary: Something terrible happened in Littlerock Mental Asylum in the 1970s. Dan and his group of historically-crazed friends know this for certain. But when you throw in corporate secrets, paranormal activity and a chilling boy with very, very blue eyes, things begin to get a little more complicated.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! Welcome to Dragonfly, the most complex work I have (so far) tackled. The plot is massively intricate and unique and you probably won’t have read anything like it in the fandom. I’m so, so proud of it though and there’s a high chance of me crying when it’s eventually finished. Still, here’s the opening chapter. Fingers crossed it’s all up to standard.

**i.**

“We shouldn’t be here.”

“Would you quit that?” Dan sighed, fiddling with the switch on the flashlight in his hand. He tapped it against his bike’s metal frame and breathed through his nose, irritated when it didn’t click on.

“No, I’m worried,” PJ insisted, putting pressure on the word and weighing it down as he peered up at the glaring building.

“Scared, you mean,” Dan muttered, concentration entirely elsewhere.

“Yeah, okay. Whatever you wanna call it. I’m scared. Terrified, actually. What does that make me?”

“A—”

“Human,” PJ rushed, before Dan could get a replacement word in. “A human being. I don’t want to go into the abandoned asylum because I’m a human being and it’s a natural instinct to fear for my life.”

“Fear for your _life_?” Dan finally glanced at him, a bit disbelieving, then went back to cursing quietly at the broken flashlight. “The worst we’re gonna see in there is a couple cockroaches and cobwebs and some darkness, if I don’t get this damn light working. Jesus.”

“He isn’t gonna help you when you're in there,” PJ zipped his jacket up tighter to his chin. “Dan, I don’t want to do this. Really. I said no.”

“Good for you. Get lost back to the town if you can’t handle it, but I’m doing this.”

“You wouldn’t do it alone. If I head back now, you’ll follow me,” PJ dared, one foot coming onto the pedal of his bike.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Dan secured the flashlight on the front of the bike by tying a piece of string around the handle. “Are you coming or not? I got this fixed now, I’m ready.”

“Dan,” PJ sighed, running a hand over his hair. “Please.”

“Please, what? It’s not rhetorical, my question requires an answer. Yes or no,” Dan said slowly, insulting his friend’s intelligence. “Are you coming with me?”

PJ drew his lip into his mouth, eyes taking up as much as they could of the dirty building. Fantasy was minuscule in comparison to reality. It wasn’t nice, admittedly, to become aware of how something in your head falls limp when fighting against something before your eyes. This asylum—this place—was sure to stay in memory forever. It set up camp in the permanent part of your brain, bringing food for your memory to feed off.

“You can’t go in alone,” PJ finally said, some sort of conclusion. “You could die or something, seriously. And I'll be the last one to have been with you, so—”

“You’d be screwed,” Dan finished, and rolled his eyes. “Just come with me, PJ.”

“That’s what I was bloody getting to, if you had some damn patience,” They began riding steadily down the dark street, illuminated only by the occasional streetlight.

“It was around here somewhere, yeah?” Dan stretched forward over his bike, squinting his eyes at the heavy gate that ran around the outside.

“What?”

“The entrance,” he said. “Can’t enter without an entrance, contrary to popular belief.”

“Shut up,” PJ sighed. “And I don’t know. As if I know where the entrance is.”

“We came here yesterday,” Dan recalled their preparing wander down this street on their way home from school.

“Yeah, when it was _daylight_. I can’t see crap now, that light is complete shit—Seriously, Dan, we’ve been planning this for months and you don’t even think to bring batteries for that thing?”

“Well, where’s your light?”

“In my bag,” PJ answered. “I’ll get it out when it’s needed.”

“Think it’s pretty damn needed right now, mate.”

“Well, why don’t we just stop for a minute so I can get it out instead of going head-first into death—”

“Hey, hey, I think this is it,” The steady roll of Dan’s bike came to a halt. He pushed himself from the seat and dragged it over towards the side, where there was a gap between two metal gates. PJ followed, off his bike also, and chased the shine of the light to the space in the barricade.

“Yeah, definitely it,” Dan said, and took a breath. “Right, okay. Get your light out, this is going again already.”

PJ shook his bag off his shoulders and unzipped it, reaching a hand in to retrieve his light. He flicked it on and watch it ignite much brighter than Dan’s had done, with some ghost of a smile on his lips.

“Give it here,” Dan reached for it, but PJ hid it behind his back.

“No, no. I don’t think so. This is mine.”

Dan crossed his arms, bike propped up against the gate and frowned. “I’m the leader of this mission.”

“Well, Daniel, I’m about to take over Mission X,” PJ flicked the torch off, then back on. “Oh, sweet, sweet light. How I do adore your existence.”

“Shut up, man,” Dan grabbed the front of his bike and used his other hand to force open the gate. He grunted at the stability of the framework, though still managed to get it open wide enough to slip inside. Then, he turned and gestured to PJ. “Come on then, leader. In you go.”

Dan was prepared to use his demotion to an advantage. If he was no longer the leader, he was still going to have some sort of a hold on their plan. He’d spent night after night scrawling up drafts for this moment; he’d sat and pondered of ghosts and demons for the majority of his fourteenth year and he was so beyond ready for this. PJ was a couple steps behind him, needless to say, but they were pretty much on the same page. They both wanted to find something.

Anything.

“I had two rounds of that chocolate cake at school today,” PJ said, Dan watching him as he forced himself through the gate, dragging his bike behind him.

“Yeah, I can tell. You’re having a bit trouble getting through there.”

“Anybody would, you didn’t open it wide enough.”

“Sure,” Dan waited a moment after PJ had slipped to the other side of the gate to follow him. He lifted his bike in the air with a huff and passed it through before climbing inside himself. Yes, it was a tight squeeze, but PJ was a professional melodramatic.

On the other side of the gate, everything was still. Overgrown trees and dirty beddings. An indescribably horrific smell that most probably stemmed from an accumulation of animal dung over the years combined with a path hard to locate amongst the jungle of the ground.

Dan rested his bike beside PJ’s against the wall that ran seemingly endlessly around the asylum. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his piece of paper, intended with lines from the folding.

“Shine here,” he demanded to PJ, who stood right at his side and let the light trickle down to the page.

It was Littlerock Asylum’s system, hand-drawn and probably not entirely accurate. But it was impressively detailed and stood as a representation of the boys’ research into this place over a period of time. It wasn’t simple, either. In red, Dan had drawn the most important sites of the asylum. The reception, the wards, the departments. And in blue, he had drawn the much more focused aspects. The little details that were easy to miss. Like the tunnels.

“Reception first,” PJ said. “We might be able to find something there.”

“I doubt there’ll be much,” Dan murmured. “You can’t keep a lot in a place open to public view.”

“Certainly no secrets, but maybe something,” PJ moved the light down to their feet, pointing it ahead of them so that they could see where they were going. They started off, walking at a pace slow enough to calculate their steps. “This place is like a damn forest, Dan. I didn’t see any of this crap on the pictures of the front gardens.”

“That’s because those pictures were taken years ago. Like, years and years ago. Decades. A lot can change in that time, especially if nature’s left to its own will.”

“I suppose,” PJ's stride was light against the path. “I hate this. The walking thing.”

“What do you mean, _the walking thing_?”

“The parts where we walk. Out in the open. It’s like in those video-games where your character has his everything exposed and you know there’s a ninety percent chance he’s fucked because he has no protection,” PJ’s eyes were darting around the landscape.

“It’s fine. Our backs are exposed but, whatever. It’d be real unlucky to die before we even get inside.”

“You know there’s a high chance of that happening.”

“Yeah,” Dan smiled. “ _They_ don’t want us in there.”

“And by _they_ you mean the cockroaches, right?”

Another smile. “Sure, PJ. The cockroaches.”

“You’re an asshat,” PJ tugged his hud up in the illumination of the torch.

“Your hud isn’t gonna protect you from the cockroaches,” Dan poked his side, then at his neck.

“It’ll protect me from these branches,” PJ slapped Dan’s hand away. “Stop that.”

“My mom would have the time of her life here, sorting these gardens—Well, I mean, she would if it wasn’t an asylum.”

“Yeah, that’s quite off-putting—Careful, the path’s getting shitter,” PJ dodged a hole in a small jump. “God, I don’t like this."

“You aren’t supposed to like it. It’s research.”

“This kind-of research doesn’t help me. At least not in school. We never have exams on mental asylums, especially not the one neighbouring our town.”

“That’s because nobody talks about it,” Dan replied. “Nobody ever talks about it. And that’s so weird. They always avoid the questions, even my mom and dad.”

“Maybe because you’re an irritating fourteen-year-old boy interested in the wrong things.”

“There’s nothing wrong with craving information,” Dan chewed his lip, brooding. “They don’t mind me asking about anything else. Or even any other asylum, as a matter of fact. It’s just this one.”

“Because this one was shut down for bad reasons,” PJ reminded him. “Remember that? Maybe they don’t wanna talk about all those horrible things with their son.”

“I don’t see why they’d care. I wouldn’t.”

“Because you’re a _sadist_.”

Dan felt a laugh bubble in the back of his throat and he shook his head to himself as they wound further down the path. It was getting darker, the air feeling thicker, and PJ continued vocalising his fears until they reached the reception. There wasn’t a trace of light inside (as expected) and dust was laying thick like some sort of mummification across the surfaces. Behind the desk, there were empty shelves, formed like stacks and there was a door that, to Dan’s knowledge, was just a supply closet for the patients.

They checked it out anyway, regardless of the expected simplicity and lack of anything particularly exciting.

When they reached the door, PJ pulled his sleeve down and wiped it across the metal sign nailed into the door, gathering all the dust and setting it off into a little explosion. Dan coughed, hand coming and clasping over his mouth as a form of protection. 

“Bloody hell, PJ,” he choked, the moment he could breathe. “A word of warning next time, maybe?”

“Yeah, sorry,” PJ seemed distracted, eyes on the Supplies sign. “Let’s check it out.”

Dan wrapped his hand around the doorknob and turned until there was a light click. He pushed on the wooden frame until it was ajar, and then walked inside steadily.

It was a little room. Small, and decorated with white sheets that they found were draped over empty crates when Dan tugged at the corner of one.

“Why empty?” PJ sounded bewildered, light dancing around the bottom of the crate.

“I don’t know,” Dan said. “Maybe they just, like, took all the stuff when it shut down.”

“Took all the stuff out? Why not just take the crate itself? Why would anybody go to the effort of taking items out individually?” PJ paused and leant down to the floor. “And what's with the sheets?”

“Don’t ask me,” Dan grumbled, giving a sigh. The room was cramped and he didn't want to stay in a single place any longer than he had to. “Come on, let’s go back out.”

The patter of PJ’s shoes against the concrete floor was a comforting conformation that he was close behind, following. Dan couldn’t afford to lose him, because he was his best friend, and because he was the only source of current light.

“Okay,” Dan began, moving his index finger through the air to pinpoint his thoughts. “If we locate the tunnel built beneath the ward to the left of here, it should lead us right to—”

“Hey, look at that camera up there,” PJ directed the torch up to the top right corner of the reception. Light glistened around the shape of a security camera.

Dan frowned. “Yeah. What about it? It’s off, right?”

“Hhm—” PJ looked at him. “Is that normal?”

“Of course it’s normal, idiot,” Dan almost laughed. “It’s been years, why would they function? They would’ve turned off the system. The cameras are probably all broken by now anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess,” PJ didn’t really sound sure.

“Relax,” Dan put a hand on his shoulder. “Nobody can see your trembling ass.”

“Shut up,” PJ thumped his arm, and Dan chuckled.

“I wanna go find some actual stuff now—Let’s go to a ward.”

::

The children’s ward was a corridor of nothing. Looking directly down, it was a complete torrent of inky darkness. Nothing. Empty. The silence ached and pooled in Dan’s ears and he felt a tickle of dryness at the back of his throat.

“I don’t like this, Dan,” PJ whispered, from right beside him. “I gotta say.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Have you?”

“If this light dies or something, we’re screwed,” he ignored Dan’s previous statement.

“Did you put new batteries in before we left your house?”

“Yeah.”

“Then stop being paranoid,” Dan sighed. “You’re gonna make yourself insane if you think about all the bad stuff that could happen to us right now.”

“Well, I’m in the right place to lose my mind.”

“Shut up, and just keep your eye on the light when we’re in the cells. Besides, a bit of darkness never hurt anyone.”

“That’s incredibly comforting.”

Dan thought if he were to roll his eyes at the infuriating boy once more, they’d roll right out of his skull. He did it anyway, as he wandered down to the first cell and ran his finger along the white panel door. It was a sickly shade, really, almost nauseous. PJ flashed the light through into the cell and Dan watched it skim carelessly across the little bed pushed into the corner. It was stripped down to just a mattress, one that was riddled with smudges of dirt and dead insects.

“Gross,” PJ scrunched up his nose, scoffing around the word.

“What did you expect?” Dan said, eyes scanning the room. “There’s literally just a bed. I thought there’d be more than that.”

“Come through here,” PJ grabbed his arm and led him through into the next cell. It was exactly the same layout, with a bed in the left corner and terribly white walls. Dan thought if he were to stare at them for long enough, he’d start to feel things and trip deeper into his mind. Like staring into static.

“I guess the cells are all the same,” PJ said. “Look at the bulb.”

Dan gaped up to the ceiling and at the bulb in the centre. It was smashed, the glass edged and sharp.

“It was like it in the other cell, too. I saw,” PJ admitted.

Dan decided then that it was probably a good idea to check the others for the same thing, so he and PJ peered through the next four doors at the ceiling and found a striking similarity in all of the bulbs.

“Do you think they, like, just smashed all the bulbs when it closed down?”

“What would be the point of that?” Dan asked and shook his head. “No, it isn’t that. It’s—It’s something weird. I don’t know what, but it’s something.”

“Secret number one?”

Dan smiled. “Secret number one. We’ve probably passed a whole lot more on the way down here but we've found one at least.”

“Yeah, it’s a start,” PJ was grinning. “Damn, this is exciting. Burst bulbs, eh?”

“Hhm,” Dan hummed, pacing in the centre of a cell. Something, something, something. His mind buzzed under his fingertips when he raised his hands to his hair, and PJ followed him with the light from the doorway.

“Dude, come on,” PJ urged. “This ward’s basic.”

“It’s weird,” Dan corrected. “We found secret number one here, chill out. We got time.”

“No, we really haven’t. We can’t stay here all night, we have school tomorrow.”

Dan gave him a look. “Do you hear yourself?”

“Come on, Howell. I wanna explore some more before we go.”

“Alright, alright,” Dan held his hands up and headed out of the door behind PJ. They moved silently down the empty corridor, passing doors that resembled the previous. Over and over again. It was like a loop. There were just so many, and they kept coming until—

Until they reached a little door towards the end labelled Warden’s Office. Dan felt the words prickle under his skin, for some reason, and he didn't know why he felt so dizzy when PJ pushed on the door and they entered.

Because it was just an office. An empty office. There was nothing out of ordinary, nothing but a desk and some shelves and a couple chairs. 

“Dan, shit.”

Dan, still standing in the doorway and looking intensely at the shape of the frame, flinched at the surface of PJ’s excited voice. “What?”

“Files,” PJ dropped a folder onto the desk and looked at him through wide eyes. “Patient files.”

Dan’s lips curled at the corners and an eager laugh burst from his chest. “Wait, are you _serious_?” he scurried across behind the desk and opened up the folder. There was maybe about fifteen in there, all children. Pictures were attached in the bottom corner, their names and details scrawled in block capitals. Dan guessed these were just the ones that had been left behind because there was a whole lot more than fifteen cells.

“Where did you find it?”

“Just under the desk. We have to take it, yeah?” PJ closed the folder, sealing it. “This is so interesting. We couldn’t have got a better find.”

“We’re taking them all, we can split them and take a read tonight then come drop the folder back tomorrow so nobody finds it and knows we’ve come here.“

“We’re coming back?”

“Do you have any idea how big this place is? We’ve done one ward.”

“That was kinda repetitive and a little boring. This is the children’s ward too, I expected a bit more. Maybe some blood on the walls or something—”

“Yeah, _I’m_ the sadist,” Dan said sarcastically. “It being the children’s ward doesn’t mean anything, kids probably got the best treatment. And it wasn’t boring anyhow, we found patient files, PJ.”

“Secret number two.”

“If it’s even a secret,” Dan shrugged. “They might just be an interesting read.”

“It’s kinda mysterious that they left fifteen behind.”

“Probably some reasoning behind it. Remember to think rational here, yeah?”

“Sorry,” PJ sighed. Dan shrugged his bag off and dropped the folder inside, zipping it up and then taking it back onto his shoulders. He stumbled with the increased weight for a moment, and arranged the straps so they weren't digging into his bones.

“Jesus, that’s bloody heavy.”

“Do you want me to carry it? Can you not handle it?”

“Let’s just get out of here, PJ.”

The feeling of apprehension remained tight in Dan’s chest until they departed the office. He didn't know what it was about that room that was so different to everywhere else they’d been in the building so far, but there was something.

Something.


	2. II

**ii.**

“And then I said ‘So are you saying you know nothing?’ and _he_ said ‘No, I just don’t want to talk about that place’,” Dan spoke with an exaggeration, leaning against PJ’s locker. 

PJ slammed it shut. “And?”

“And don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Dan, _everything’s_ weird to you. There’s nothing strange about it, it’s just a father not wanting to discuss a brutal asylum with his son. Stop reading into everything, it’s one your worst traits.”

“It’s not just my father though, is it? It’s everyone. Everyone that was old enough to remember. When you ask them, it’s like—”

“Like they don’t want to talk about it.”

Dan nodded quickly.

“Maybe because they don’t? Look, we kinda know that place wasn’t the purest and people don’t wanna talk about it because it’s so close to home,” PJ stuffed his books into his bag. “What’s brought this on? You were fine on the way home from there last night.”

“I just—”

PJ took a sharp breath. “Did you find something in the files?”

“No, I’ve only read one. I’ve just been thinking a lot about it, that’s all.”

“You think a lot about everything. Overthink. It’s probably not good for your mental health.”

“You know what else isn’t? Reading files of dead mental institution patients. But I’m gonna do it anyway and so are you,” Dan paused. “Have you read any yet?”

“Yeah, a couple last night. Probably not in as much detail as you, but I remember their names at least,” PJ scratched the side of his head. “A Bobby Archer and a Jamie Pierce. Kinda ordinary, honestly.”

PJ flung his bag onto his back and he and Dan started off into a slow walk to first period.

“Their files were ordinary?”

“No, Dan. They’re kids in a mental asylum, how can their files be ordinary?” he sighed. “I meant their names. Just their names. Normal names for abnormal people.”

“Damaged people,” Dan murmured. “Why were they in there?”

“I don’t remember much about Jamie, honestly. Some random reason, probably didn’t deserve to be locked up.”

“What about Bobby?”

“Murdered his little sister,” PJ said slowly, a bit atmospheric, and Dan gave him a stare. “I know, right? He was nine, and she seven. They were still babies, really.”

They reached their English classroom and Dan slumped himself against the wall, eyebrows drawn down in an expression of intrigue. “How’d he do it?”

“Drowning. They were in the bath together, you know like you do when you’re a kid? Innocent and stuff and then, bam, he decides that’s it. Pushes her head under and she’s out of it.”

Dan’s eyes were wide. “Bloody hell.”

“Yeah,” PJ fiddled with some of the paper in is pocket. “What about your kid?”

“Elliot Harris. He was fifteen,” Dan gave a momentary halt. “His mother was shot and they thought it was his father because he was abusive but then they found out it was actually him. The damn son. Schizophrenia, apparently.”

“I didn’t even look at the suspected illness,” PJ admitted. “They’re probably all wrong. They didn’t know anything about the mind back in the day, they were just making guesses.”

“Choosing the one that seemed the most accurate,” Dan agreed, and shook his bag on his back. “I brought a couple more files in today, anyway. We’re reading some Shakespearian shit so I though I’d do a bit of a replacement. I sit at the back, so nobody’ll know.”

“I thought you liked Shakespearian shit?”

“Dude,” Dan laughed. “In comparison to child patient files, it’s a load of _drivel_.”

::

English passed in a haze of falsity. Dan made sure to look at the file wedged between his copy of the play only when the class were told to. He fell into the crowd—which was his intention and nothing out of the ordinary, since he was never one to be the centre of attention—and knew enough about Macbeth to write an analysis off the top of his head.

He got through three more files in the duration of the lesson. Two of the kids were male, one female, and their reasons for confinement were, dare he say, generic. 

Murder, murder, murder.

Dan felt like banging his fists on the table and demanding a more interesting reason scrawled in the box. But that’d make him the biggest asshole ever. That’d make him, generally, insane. A sadist, as PJ had rather accurately given.

At lunch that day, Dan sat in his usual place with his usual people. PJ, Chris and Cat. Chris and Cat were . . . they were below-the-radar weirdos. They didn’t actively visit asylums for fun like Dan and PJ, but they enjoyed general conversation about it.

General conversation had never been enough for the other two, however, so they often secluded themselves and hung out together. 

“Mr. Axel is a right twat, you know?” Was Chris’ opening statement as he dropped down on their table.

“I’m aware,” PJ took a bite from the end of a carrot stick.

Chris’s face settled, then twisted up into a tight confusion. “What the hell are you eating?”

“Chris,” PJ said, sarcastic. “Eat these babies, and they prevent blindness.”

Dan and Cat laughed simultaneously.

“I’m not blind, I just—Pardon me for the shock at seeing you eating actual carrots. Vegetables. I’m proud of you.”

“Yeah, whatever, it wasn’t optional,” PJ weakly insisted. “What about Mr. Axel?”

“He’s a twat.”

“We got that part,” Cat interjected with an eye roll. “Can we have some reasoning now?”

“He just is. I got a detention for tonight after school for ‘lack of attention during lesson’. Is that even a damn thing?” Chris got his sandwich out of the little plastic container and took a bite. “Friday night, what a _twat_.”

“How long for?” Dan asked him.

“Oh, he speaks,” Cat teased, a soft insult.

“An hour,” Chris said, then addressed at Dan. “Why you so distant, mate?”

“I’m not?” Dan blinked a couple times. “Just thinking a lot today, I don’t know. Got stuff on my mind.”

“He’s fine,” PJ sounded false, and Dan kicked his leg under the table.

“If you were in Axel’s class, you’d be in the detention with me then.”

“Does this mean I have to wait behind for you again?” Cat had some sort of realisation, slapping her palms on the table.

“I mean, you don’t have to. Walk home alone,” Chris said, mouthful of chicken and mayonnaise.

“You know my mom would straight murder me if I did that. Chris, you’re an _ass_. Is it so hard to go a week without getting a detention? I’ve never had _one_.”

“Because you’re you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cat thumped his shoulder.

“Hey!” he flinched away. “You’re just—Well, you’re sensible. Respectful. You do good things, I don't know! Jesus, I was being nice.”

Cat scoffed. “ _Nice_. Nice isn’t getting an hour's detention when you know we gotta walk home together. This is a deal here, you keep trampling over it.”

“I said sorry, didn’t I?”

“No.”

Chris stared at her for a moment, face unamused, then forced out a hard, “I am deeply sorry for my mistake.”

“Doesn’t change anything,” Cat leant across the table and snatched a carrot stick.

“Uh, excuse me,” PJ slapped her wrist away. “Hands off.”

“She didn’t realise you were so defensive of your finely sliced carrots,” Dan said, face resting lazily against his hand.

“Exactly,” Cat took a bite from the end.

“Hey, I gotta have my five-a-day. Even if just in small quantities.”

“What are you guys doing tonight?” Chris changed the subject like the flick of a switch, addressing Dan and PJ. They glanced to one another, then shrugged.

“Just hanging out,” PJ dismissed.

“Oh,” Chris frowned. “Where?”

“Uh, Dan’s place probably. It was mine last night, so. We got a schedule going here.”

Dan nodded along, then added, “We have. It’s a routine.”

“Cool, so we all meet at Dan’s at six-ish?” Chris grinned.

“No!” PJ and Dan were so quick in their defence that it was coated in an undeniable suspicion. Dan cleared his throat, scratching at the back of his neck, and wracked his brain for excuses.

“I mean, I’m feeling kinda sick actually. It’s why I’m a bit distant. I’m tired, too. I’m thinking maybe a movie marathon in bed,” Dan coughed through his words, for effect.

“Aw,” Cat stroked his arm. “That sounds cool. Some soup, too, tell your mom.”

Dan just smiled at her, as PJ falsely decided to stay home and get an early night also.

::

_I can’t keep lying to them._

The words lit up on Dan’s phone screen that evening as he sat on his bike outside PJ’s place.

 _Who?_ he replied. _Get out here, I’m waiting for ya._

_C+C. We should’ve just told them about Mission X to begin with. (Which was my original suggestion, may I add.)_

You may not. JUST GET THE HELL OUT HERE IM FREEZING ASS OFF

Dan waited for a few minutes after he’d tapped out the words with no response. Then, he caught sight of a shadowed figure dropping down from the low ledge of a window on the front of the house, and rolled his eyes as PJ came with his bike down the driveway in a ski-mask.

“The hell did you get that thing, Peej?” Dan sighed.

“My dad’s closet—How’d you know it’s PJ?”

“Because you just answered to your name, take that stupid thing off,” Dan reached pulled on the loose fabric, tearing it off PJ’s head. 

“Give it back. I got you your own, there’s no need to steal,” PJ took it back and retrieved another one out of his pocket, handing it to Dan. It was a dark grey, and Dan knew it was expected to act as some form of camouflage.

“Dude, put it the hell away.”

“It’ll protect your mind from the bad atmospheres.”

“Bad atmospheres?”

“Yeah. The air’s riddled with insanity back there, you gotta have some form of protection.”

“I appreciate your concern, but it might look rather suspicious to see two kids riding to an asylum in ski-masks.”

PJ sighed. “Put it on when you get there then.”

“Really?”

PJ flicked the bell on the front of his bike, pausing between the words. “Bad. Atmospheres.”

::

“ _Littlerock was built in the late 1800’s and closed in November of 1979. What went on inside from June of 1974 to April of 1978 was suspiciously classified. Journalists were sent away when they turned up at the doors during this time period_.”

“Where’d you find that?” Dan held the flashlight that night as they navigated through the almost familiar darkness of the children’s ward. They were dressed in their masks, and Dan breathed out around the fabric.

“An article from 2003,” PJ answered. “It’s interesting, don’t you think?”

“Hhm,” Dan contemplated the words. “Did you copy it exactly? It was written just like that, or did you paraphrase it?”

“No. Written like it. Why?”

“The ‘what went on inside’ part is weird. How’d they know something went on?”

“Because of the classified information part?”

“No, no,” Dan shook his head. “‘What went on’. That implies they know something went on, but how would they if it was always classified? Classifying information isn’t necessarily to hide something; it rises suspicion, but how could they be sure?”

“Oh, good point,” PJ realised. “Maybe, uh, maybe it isn’t classified anymore? What happened during that time, I mean.”

“You mean, the information’s out? People know what happened?”

“Maybe,” PJ repeated. “I didn’t read the article entirely. Just skimmed the first paragraph or so. We’ll have to do some research.”

“This is research.”

PJ dug his hands into his pockets and breathed heavily. “Why are we in this ward again? There’s nothing to see—You said yourself there was so much more.”

“I told you, I just want to go back to that office.”

“Why?”

“Because there was something weird about it and it’s bothering me, okay? Okay,” They reached the door of the Warden’s office and Dan’s hand pushed at it, the other shining the torch through the crack and illuminating the small room.

_Something, something, something._

Dan walked slowly through the room, light splattering up the walls. Everything was concrete, areas hidden behind cabinets and shelves and beneath a desk. He ran his fingers down along the side of a cabinet peculiarly placed in the centre of the backing wall and fiddled with the lining of fabric on his mask.

“Dan,” PJ sounded bored. “What are you doing, dude?”

Dan let a single finger trail to a crack at the side of the cabinet. It was a perfect line that went all the way down, right to the bottom of the floor.

“Peej, come here a second.”

“Why?” PJ pattered across the floor, stopping right behind Dan. “What is it?”

“Help me push this cabinet.”

He sighed. “Dan—”

“Just help me, bloody hell.”

PJ shuffled to the other side of the cabinet and help Dan shift it a few feet the side. Dan insisted they moved it more and then finally, they stopped, when the change of position revealed the more obvious outline of a door. There was a hard light that was escaping beneath the bottom, spilling out as though there was a current of electricity behind it.

“Jesus, Dan!” PJ exclaimed, shaded with a laugh. “How did you—How the hell did you—”

“I told you there was something weird,” Dan muttered, smiling. “Shall we go in?”

“Of course we go in. Are you kidding me? This is gold.”

“Alright, okay, just stay sensible with this. Take it slow,” Dan rested his hand on the handle and turned it down. PJ eagerly (but with a trace of control) put his hands on the door and pushed at it.

It was hard to grasp what was inside. It felt a bit like trying to hold water in your first. It always failed and you always lost a bit.

The room was a basic square, a compact box. Concrete walls, concrete floors, no windows. There was a collection of rumpled blankets on the ground and a working, shining lightbulb in the centre of the ceiling. In the corner, there was a security camera.

“That bulb’s working,” PJ stated, as Dan flicked off the torch.

“I guess there is electricity then,” Dan moved to the side of the room, where a switch was located. He turned the light off and on, flitting into darkness for a couple seconds. “Somebody’s got to have been here to turn it on.”

“What?”

“Somebody must have been here to put this light on. Come on, PJ, you’re not that stupid. A single light can’t have stayed on for however many years this place has been closed.”

“Alright, well,” PJ looked around. “There’s nobody here, so. Where’s your explanation for that, Dan?”

“Listen, I was just stating the obvious.”

“The obvious? You’re making this into some damn mystery, yesterday you were telling me to think rationally. What do you seriously think happened here? Some ghost switched the bulb on?” PJ laughed.

“Did I say that?” Dan glared at him. “It’s just weird that there’s a single light in this entire ward that works and it’s on—”

There was a clamber and a clash behind them, and they turned simultaneously in a sort-of jump. PJ made a sound of surprise, scuttling a few steps away from the doorway and—

Dan stared directly at the boy stood under the frame, mouth shaped in a curve of shock. The light irradiated his pale skin beneath his clothes that, admittedly, were fairly normal. Baggy red hoodie, trousers, red shoes. He backed up under the glare of Dan’s eyes and whimpered, terror drawn under the lines of his face.

Then, without giving anything else, he turned and bolted.

“Shit!” PJ thumped Dan’s shoulder and grabbed his shirt, half-dragging him as he ran out of the little room.

“What the _fuck_ are you—”

“Come on, idiot! Get after him!”

“Alright, Jesus!” Dan shook his friend’s grip from his clothes and followed him at the same pace. They sprinted out of the office, letting the door swing back and clap off the hinges. The corridor was as dark and inky as before, as Dan didn’t want it to be, and he fumbled with the light in his hands as he ran.

“I can’t see a _bloody_ thing—Turn the light on, Dan!” PJ panted through the words as he raced.

“I’m trying!” Dan snapped at the urgency, then managed relief in a hard exhale as the corridor shuddered to a sea of illumination.

“About time—” PJ yelled, just a few feet in front of Dan. “I can see him, keep going!”

Dan squinted down the corridor and saw only the hazy outline of a distant figure charging at a much faster speed. He didn’t know how long he could last chasing this boy, he didn’t know who he was or what the hell he was doing here, and he certainly didn’t know what they were getting out of trying to catch him. Maybe just some answers. Maybe a laugh and a _hey, are you exploring, too? This place is weird, isn't it?_

“He’s getting faster, dammit!” PJ narrated, rushed and heavy. “Come on, Dan!”

“I’ve got a stitch!” Dan gripped at his side, wincing and trying to control his breathing.

“I’m not leaving this—We gotta catch him, we can’t lose him now!”

PJ slowed to a dramatic halt at the end of the corridor, where the ward began. He looked left, then right, and Dan put his hands on his knees in a gasp for oxygen.

PJ rested himself against Dan momentarily, grappling for breath also, then stood back up properly. “We’ve so lost him, for God’s sake,” he cursed. “I didn’t see which way he went and he’ll be long gone by now.”

“That was—What the hell just happened?” Dan ran a hand through his hair. “Why did he run? What did we do? You’d naturally be a bit startled but that was—that was just not right.”

“Exactly why I chased him,” PJ leant on the frame of the ward’s entrance.

“Maybe we can still catch up—Shit, we still have these damn masks on,” Dan tugged the fabric over his head. “Probably scared the undying crap out of him.”

“Still no reason to dart, we’re obviously human.”

“That’s not the point, our intentions are cloudy with these,” Dan instinctively glanced into the nearest cell, where his light hung. It was pointed directly at a red shoe; a rawly familiar colour making his heart leap.

“PJ,” he grabbed the boy’s arm. “PJ, I got him, he’s in here!”

PJ moved so quickly into the cell that when the boy made for a second sharp getaway, he shoved at his shoulders and watched him stumble back.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” PJ growled.

“Dude, chill out,” Dan gave him a look, then flickered his eyes back to the boy who was leant against a cell wall. He cleared his throat, narrowed his eyes and carefully asked, “Who are you?”

“S-Skye,” the boy answered with a bit of a shaken stutter. “Skye Clark.”

“Skye?” PJ tried the name on his tongue.

“That’s it,” Skye said, voice still struck with something—an almost terror. “Skye.”

“Alright,” Dan was stood, blocking the cell’s exit. “Skye. Are you exploring?”

Skye swallowed so hard, it was audible. His breath drew unevenly into the air. “I suppose. Not really. I—I’m living here.”

“You’re living here?” PJ looked at Dan, eyes saying _this guy is insane_. “Well.”

“What do you mean _living_ here?” Dan ignored his friend.

“Living. Here,” he broke it down, slicing through the middle. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. This building has a roof.”

“You’re homeless?” Dan asked.

“And squatting here? _Here_ , dude, of all places?”

“It’s nice here,” Skye murmured, false and disbelievingly unconvincing, back still against the wall.

“Well,” Dan tried to decode the information for flaws. “What have you been eating and stuff?”

“Scraps,” Skye admitted. Scraps? “Not a lot.”

Dan eyed the boy, made more prominent in the light, running it down his small body. He couldn’t have been a much different age to them, though he acted a lot younger. He was thin, skin tight over his bones under his clothes. “You’re brave for sleeping here. This place is . . . You know.”

Skye blinked. “What?”

“Well, an asylum,” Dan shrugged. “Need I say anymore?”

“Haunted,” PJ pushed the word into the air with a breath of mock-terror. The boy flinched back, skittish.

“It probably isn’t,” Dan laughed shortly at this reaction, giving a shake of his head.

Skye lifted a hand into the air and pointed at PJ. “Why are you wearing that thing over your face?”

“It’s a mask,” PJ corrected. “To protect me. From the bad atmospheres. We should get you one if you're staying here—”

“Take it off,” Dan rolled his eyes, scoffing as he reached and pulled the mask from PJ’s head for the second time that night. He stuffed it into his pocket.

PJ stared at him. “I hope you know you’re responsible for the contamination of my mind.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Dan sighed and looked to Skye. “I’m sorry for him.”

“I’m sorry for _him_ ,” PJ said. “Dan here doesn’t understand the risks of an open mind in an asylum—”

“Dan,” Skye echoed, drawing the name out of PJ’s grumble.

“Yeah,” Dan smiled at him. “That’s me. This is PJ.”

“PJ.”

“You’re not even listening to me,” PJ huffed. “Are you staying here forever?”

Skye fiddled with the tassel hanging from his hoodie. “As long as I can. Not forever. I couldn't—I couldn’t live that long.”

“Suppose not,” PJ evened. “What a place to call home, eh, Dan?”

“Yeah,” Dan lifted his eyebrows in a nod. “Cool, though. Kinda. Do you know any secrets? PJ and I are exploring and—”

“You won’t find much here,” Skye interjected, edges of his voice sharp.

“Oh,” Dan frowned. “Really? Have you had a look around then?”

“Yeah—When I arrived, I did. It’s a bit boring, like . . . not much to see. You’re probably wasting your time looking for something.”

“There’s no secrets?” PJ chirped.

Skye shook his head, face ignited with the light in Dan’s hand.

“That’s—” Dan thought for a moment. “That can’t be true. There must be something.”

“Nothing,” Skye insisted quietly.

“What about that room?” PJ clicked his fingers. “The one backing the warden’s office down there. What’s the deal with that?”

“It’s just a room.”

“So you’ve seen it?”

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t think it’s remotely weird?” Dan pushed him.

“No,” Skye twisted a hand through his midnight hair. “It’s my room.”

Dan’s interest sparked. “Your room? You did it? Made it?”

“No, well—I didn’t. I just sorted the lightbulb and got myself some blankets. It’s where I sleep. It’s safe and nice and—” Skye looked lost for a moment, eyes wandering under the glare of the light. “Nobody knows you’re there.”

“Apart from our nosey asses,” PJ laughed. “Sorry about the intrusion, mate. We have a tendency for going where we’re not wanted.”

“How did you fix the bulb, though?” Dan was tangled up in Skye’s earlier words.

“It wasn’t difficult. It was just—It was there. The room with the bulb. And the light was working.”

“Guess the warden here did have some secrets then,” PJ crossed his arms.

“No,” Skye disagreed. “No, it’s probably nothing. Even if it was, it’s gone now. There’s nothing here anymore.”

“Just because something’s been buried doesn’t mean it no longer exists,” Dan spoke. “There's a working lightbulb in an ancient building, Skye, and you don’t think that’s bizarre?"

He looked uncomfortable. “Maybe a bit. I don’t know.”

“Dude,” PJ sighed. “Don’t scare him, he lives here. Save your creepy, what-if shit for later.”

“It’s not what-if shit, it’s history.”

“ _It’s history_ ,” PJ mocked. “God, do you hear yourself? Even the homeless kid knows you’re off your rocker. There’s nothing going on in this ward, Dan, why are you so obsessed with it?”

“Because there’s something here,” he insisted, stern. “I know it. I can feel it.”

“Feel it? You can feel it? You probably just need a piss,” PJ grinned to himself at the joke. “Seriously, knock it off with this shit. There’s nothing here, Dan. I wanna explore somewhere else, this place is boring the hell out of me now.”

“What has the world come to, PJ getting bored in the children’s ward of a psychiatric hospital?” Dan mock-gasped, then pressed his lips together. “And you’re the one fucking around with those stupid masks.”

“Hey, they’re the real deal.”

“Real deal,” Dan scoffed.

“There’s no bad atmospheres here,” Skye muttered, voice dulled.

Dan made a face. “See.”

“There’s also nothing mysterious here,” Skye added.

“See,” PJ repeated.

Dan fiddled with the hard straps of his bag, grumbling curses under his breath before announcing, “We should get going. Just come back tomorrow, it’ll be Saturday anyway. I’m tired and my head’s a mess.”

PJ’s eyes lit up. “That’s because of—”

“There’s no bad atmospheres!” Dan snapped. “Dammit, PJ, knock it off, would you?”

PJ’s face was completely unamused now. “We’re going home.”

“I _just_ said that,” Dan sighed and turned back to Skye. “We’re gonna come back tomorrow—Um, do you want us to bring anything? Like, food or something, maybe?”

“Uh,” Skye blinked, the offer taking the words from his mouth. “Yes, please.”

“Cool. We’ll bring loads,” Dan smiled. “Sorry again for scaring you. Catch you tomorrow.”

Dan pushed at PJ’s shoulders and they took a few steps towards the door before Skye’s voice fluttered in again.

“I like your bikes,” he almost whispered. Dan slowed to a halt, not sure if he’d heard correctly. “They’re cool.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be coming soon. This story is, no doubt, difficult to write and I’m guessing to also read. Everything in it has been planned to a great extent, but I’m still ridiculously self-conscious and paranoid that there are gaping plot holes.


	3. III

**iii.**

“Are you kidding me? You didn’t hear him?”

“No, Dan,” PJ said, monotone. He rode in front at a steady pace down the street, irritatingly ignorant like he had been all the way home. It was weird for him, since he liked to talk. Dan had pulled at some strings and snapped a couple, clearly.

“He said our bikes were cool—How the hell would he know our bikes are cool? How would he even know we came on bikes?”

“I’m gonna desert you in the middle of this street in a minute if you don’t shut up,” PJ snapped, head titling to glare at Dan as he rode to his side. “He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t _hear_ him say anything—”

“And I’m supposed to believe you did?”

“Yeah, you are,” Dan gave him a hard stare. “I’m your best friend and I wouldn’t lie to you.”

PJ’s laugh was one amused. “Do you want to recall the incident regarding my Nirvana CD a couple months ago?”

“Okay, I _told_ you I didn’t take that, I just borrowed it,” Dan leant over the frame of his bike to push the words against PJ’s chest, letting them attack at him.

“ _Borrowed_ —You mean like I borrowed your girlfriend when we were twelve?”

Dan tightened his fingers around the handle-bars. “That was completely different.”

“How? Because I actually admitted to stealing?”

“This hasn’t got anything to do with CDs or girlfriends, it’s about Skye—”

“Do you not trust him or something? Is that what this is?” PJ queried. “Because when you get paranoid about something, your mind becomes this intuitive game and it wins by making you believe in stuff that didn’t actually happen.”

“PJ, this isn’t psychosis. Skye said that. He could be secret number three. This is reality.”

“That’s what all psychosis patients say . . . ”

Dan, patience wearing down to the bone, reached forward mid-pedal and grabbed the front of PJ’s frame, halting both their bikes in one motion. PJ looked at him, eyes wide, and Dan barked, “Can you take me serious for one damn second?”

“You know, that’s hard when you’re acting like you should be locked in one of those cells.”

“Why the hell would I lie about Skye saying stuff about our bikes?”

PJ exhaled, feet securing himself on the ground. “Okay, maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe he said it. But what exactly are you trying to get out of making a big deal of it? It was a statement. He likes our bikes, he’s a cool dude,” he waved his hand between them. “There’s no problem here, Dan. You just want there to be. Like you do with everything. You think life is this massive game of cat and mouse as if you’re Sherlock Holmes and every tiny, potential coincidence is the start of a new case. But it isn't, okay—Wake up, Dan! There’s nothing, there’s never anything. Aren’t you bored of being disappointed by now?”

Dan watched PJ’s face for a moment after his voice disappeared, waiting for a trace of something more. When there came nothing, Dan gripped the handles of his bike, settled quickly down on the seat and started back off without a word.

“Dan,” PJ called from behind him. “Dan, hey! Don’t get your knickers in a twist about it, I was just trying to make you see my side—Would you slow down?”

“Go to hell, PJ,” Dan spat, and stood up as he increased his speed down the road, turning off at the corner and leaving PJ behind.

 _It’s no big deal,_ he thought. _He can find his way from here. It’s only three minutes, maximum. He’s a big boy._

Needless to say, Dan was pissed. He was pushing the marker that drew just irritated, annoyed, enraged. He wasn’t about to flip shit and punch somebody or anything, but he had it in him in that ride home more than he had done any other time.

Because Dan Howell wasn’t one to just brush off the hairs of embarrassment. They always seemed to get caught under his skin, like little critters, prickling there. Humiliation pulsed in the heavy strum of his heart, running in the colour of his blood and it felt like mixing paint. He didn’t like it at all, to be humiliated. Made fun of. To feel the complete force of unease hit him like a stone to the face.

His parents were in the living-room, he saw, when he rolled up the driveway. They never seemed to draw the curtains of an evening, which Dan vocally disapproved of. He left his bike around the side of the house (there was little crime in the town but there were bursts of theft occasionally every year) and heaved himself up onto the ledges of his house, climbing strategically through into his window. He dropped down onto his carpet, sliding the pane shut with a soft sound.

Dan’s fingers clawed up at the hem of his jacket and he shrugged it off to follow his backpack. Inside, he’d stuffed the patient files, and he unzipped it to retrieve them. He dropped them onto his bed and ran a hand through his hair as he stared at them, mind wheeling with _Skye, Skye, Skye._

He was just so weird.

“Dan?” There was a knock at his door, and the sound of his younger brother’s voice.

“Fuck,” Dan cursed, scrambling to shove the files onto the floor and throw himself against his pillow as the door clicked open. He pushed himself up on his elbows at the sight of his brother and frowned, mock-oblivious. “What do you want?”

“Where did you go?” Adrian, ten-years-old, folded his arms over his chest like a demanding little shit. “Tell me.”

“What do you mean, where did I go?” Dan fired back, innocently. “Right here. The whole time.”

“Nope,” Adrian smirked. “You snuck out.”

“You’re a liar.”

“You are,” Adrian responded. “I came in about twenty minutes ago and you were gone. Just admit it. You snuck out.”

“Okay,” Dan surrendered, with a coldness. “Yeah, okay, whatever. I did. What’re you gonna do about it?”

Adrian backed a step out the door. “Tell mom and dad . . . ”

“No!” Dan jumped from his bed, scurrying over and fisting the fabric of his brother’s shirt. “Stop it, you can’t do that—You have no proof.”

“You know they’ll believe me over you,” Adrian rolled his eyes. “Don’t kid yourself, Danny.”

“You love having the upper-hand, don’t you?”

“Indeed,” he smirked again. “So do you. Who doesn’t?”

Dan released his shirt to lean against the door. “What do you want me to do? What do I have to do to prevent you telling them?”

“Do my History homework for me for the next couple of weeks. Until the end of term.”

“Adrian, are you kidding me?”

“You know I’m not,” Adrian patted Dan’s shoulder. “Thanks, brother. It’s much appreciated. I’ll get the first piece to you on Sunday.”

And, with that, he left, skipping off down the hall and disappearing behind his bedroom door.

Dan slammed his shut with a lot of words in his head and not enough ways to say them.

::

That next morning, it was a Saturday, and Dan rolled out of his bed like the day routinely allowed him to. It wasn’t late by any means, it wasn’t even nine, but it was late for him. He wasn’t one to sleep any later than eight, usually.

Dan dragged his feet down the stairs to breakfast, hand lazily in his hair and a yawn at the back of his throat. In the kitchen, his father sat with his thumb on the corner of a newspaper and his mother stood clattering pans near the stove.

“Morning,” she greeted him, as he slid down onto his usual seat. “You’re up late. What time did you get off to bed last night?”

“Normal time,” Dan shrugged off her inquiry.

“Spending too many hours on that laptop of yours, I say,” His father grunted, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Don’t make me regret buying you that thing for Christmas.”

“I didn’t even go on it last night, as a matter of fact.”

“I just don’t want to have to start monitoring your time on it.”

“Then don’t,” Dan grumbled. “There’s no need to, God.”

His mother tutted. “I’ve told you about using God’s name in vain. Now, what’re you having for breakfast?”

“Just,” Dan glanced at the counter. “Toast, I guess.”

“Right, well, you’ll have to do it,” she tucked the dishcloth over the side of the stove once she had taken the plug out of the sink, letting the water drain. “I’ve got to take Adrian down to the skatepark. He’s meeting Oliver.”

Dan pushed himself up from the table with a sigh and approached the toaster. “Can’t he just walk?”

“He’s going to that other one. You know, on the opposite side of town.”

“Mom, come on,” Dan looked at her. “Oakwell really isn’t that big of a place. It’d take him twenty minutes, maximum.”

“Not all children have bikes like you, Daniel,” Dan’s father chirped. “Adrian’s ten-years-old, and it’d take him a good half hour to walk.”

Dan reached for the bread and stuffed it into the toaster, resting his face on his hand and staring it down. “I’m just saying, you should give him some freedom.”

“That’s funny, I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” His mother left the words in the air as she disappeared behind the kitchen door. Dan rolled his eyes.

“She’s right. You always have to have your say, don’t you?”

“Dad, I was just—I wasn’t trying to start anything. I’ve only just woken up, it’s a Saturday, the sun’s shining; everything’s good,” Dan forced a grin so large it ate up his face and left the sides of his cheeks aching in emptiness from the stolen smile. “Let’s just be chill.”

“I am chill.”

Dan made a face. “I don’t know why I imagined that sounding way cooler in your voice.”

Once his toast popped up, he buttered it and made himself a cup of tea with the last of the milk (much to his father’s returning disapproval) before heading upstairs. Dan’s parents had had a strict ‘no eating upstairs’ rule implanted since the day his older brother was born, but Dan regularly disobeyed their guidelines. There was never really any initiative behind the individual commands, usually just a yearn for authority.

As Dan sat on his bed and ate his toast, sipping occasionally from his tea, he opened up his laptop and typed ‘Littlerock’ into the search bar. Familiarly old and vintage photography littered across the screen and the low pixels danced in his eyes. He scrolled down further until his cursor hovered over an article not coloured purple, and he clicked on it.

The website was titled **www.thinkmentally.com** and produced a collection of, again, familiar photos but this time some text also accompanied it. Dan washed down the taste of buttery bread with a sip from his mug, and shifted into a crossed-legged position to scan the information.

_Littlerock Asylum stood bordering the town of Oakwell, England as an institution for the mentally-ill from 1899 to 1979. Although the building still remains, it is no longer active, after closing permanently on November, 13th 1979. Over 85% of the patients were distributed to Orington Hospital, London, with the remaining 15% being scattered around to other areas of the country._

_During the lengthy period of its activity, Littlerock sheltered and treated its patients using various beneficial practises._

Dan let his eyes focus intently on the words, attention settling across them. He lifted a hand to his lip and squeezed on the skin lightly with two fingers, so it paled.

_Littlerock was opened in the 1800’s by William Lester before his eldest son, Grant Lester, inherited the ownership in 1952._

“Lester,” Dan tasted the word, letting it soak momentarily into his tongue before reaching for his phone.

 _Does the name Lester mean anything to you?_ he sent the words to PJ in a spur-of-the-moment hope that they could forget last night’s confrontation.

Within a minute, PJ had replied.

_Lester?? No. Why? (Also, you owe me a hell of an apology for leaving me to walk home yesterday. Bastard.)_

_The Lester family owned Littlerock (sure man whatever)_

_From the opening until the closing?? It stayed in inheritance?? (Where was your grammar there, Daniel?)_

_Yeah, like almost 100 years or something. I looked the dates up. There was only two guys who owned it though; William and then his eldest son, Grant. (Up your arse.)_

_Seriously?? Is Grant still alive?? I’m gonna search his name. (Can’t feel anything.)_

_Idk I doubt it._

Dan held his phone as he typed the name into Google. A decent amount of photographs appeared, and a few generic articles. Dan skimmed down to the Wiki page and found the same information that linked with Littlerock.

 _Yeah, he’s dead,_ PJ replied. _Not like we can find him and ask about why it shut down lol. That’s all I’m interested in really. Madly suspicious. Have you found out what happened from 74-78?? That’s gotta link with it._

_No, there’s nothing online. It is classified information, what do you expect? Idk what else we can try but the Internet. All the history books we’ve checked lack so much info on the place anyway._

Dan was correct with that. He knew he was. Every piece of material they’d found on Littlerock in historical texts all seemed so . . . vague. Off. Like there was something missing. Like somebody had gone right in and just ripped out a couple pages, but conjoined the words to make it seem as though there was nothing amiss. It was all very peculiar and irritated Dan indescribably; how could he possibly research a place in detail if there was detail missing? It was all just like a mystery of some sort.

 _Hey, when are we meeting today?_ he texted PJ again. _I can’t stay in this house for much longer. We gotta get food to Skye and I wanna inspect some stuff._

_Are you suggesting we go in daylight?!_

_Nobody’ll see. We’ll be stealthy. Like ninjas. Just don’t bring those masks._

_Dan._

_What?_

_You can’t be a ninja without a mask. Besides, I gotta give one to Skye. He’s living in that place with all that stuff._

_Cockroaches._

_Exactly. The cockroaches will riddle his brain. He’s well hard, staying in there alone day and night. Do you think he ever leaves??_

_No, PJ. He just summons scraps of food out of his fingertips._

_I bet he does. I bet he’s magical. Did you see the colour of his eyes??_

_Blue. And of course he’s magical._

_If you’re talking about that damn bike thing again, I swear to God. He probably just saw them laying outside or something. Maybe he was sneaking in as we were. There’ll be a rational explanation, trust me. He’s magical but not in that sense._

_And you’d know, PJ? You and your mask/protection/air theories?_

_Bad atmospheres, Dan. You can’t destroy them, so you find a way to live with them._

::

Dan filled his backpack with a whole assortment of goods when his mother left with Adrian, and his father went into the garage to work on his car. After packing the stuff into the bag, he briefly mentioned that he was going out (pointing out PJ standing at the end of the drive), and departed out the front door to collect his bike from the side of the house.

He dragged it to the driveway, hands on the bars, and when he reached the end, hurled himself up onto the seat. PJ held his fist out and Dan bumped his with it instinctively, looking a bit confused.

“Truce,” PJ said. “From yesterday.”

“Ah,” Dan gave him a smile. “Definitely. Sorry about the desertion.”

“Sorry about the ridiculing.”

And then they set off, moving down the street beneath the shine of early-afternoon sun. As they passed, Dan nodded to his neighbours, who separately acted on their gardens. Mr. Allen was mowing his lawn and Mrs Orly was weeding in her bed of gorgeous lilies.

“It’s nice to see your street of active neighbours,” PJ commented, riding just before Dan.

“Excuse me?”

“Mine’s full of old farts that hiss at the sight of the sun. Serious vitamin D deficiencies going on there.”

Dan grinned at the words. “They can’t all be old.”

“Oh, they are. I’m like the heart of that street—probably because I have the only fully functioning organ.”

“Peej!” Dan’s laughed cracked over the soft run of the bikes.

“No, but seriously. It’s kinda irritating.”

“To have a fully functioning organ?”

“No, to be the heart of the street. It’s like going to a family gathering. Everybody just smothers and suffocates you in affection,” PJ paused to scoff. “I am _not_ one for affection.”

“Relatable shit there,” Dan waved his hand between them.

“It’s why you’re my best mate. Well, I mean, our comparability and the fact that my only two other options are Chris and Cat. In that competition, you come out on top.”

Dan laughed again, sunlight squaring down into his eyes. “Thanks, I guess.”

::

The asylum looked peculiarly different in the soft haze of day. Dan and PJ had only ever seen it in the orange cast of evening or inked between the blanket of nothingness at night. It looked . . . different. Calmer.

Dan thought maybe everything did during the day.

It felt like a storm had passed.

“Can I see what food you brought?” PJ asked, hand on the zip of Dan’s bag.

“Just some sweets and stuff,” Dan pushed him off.

“Sweets? Really?”

“Forgive me for believing the homeless boy would give three quarters of a shit about his five a day.”

PJ sighed. “Whatever. How’re we gonna get in?”

“The same way we always do,” Dan rolled his bike up to the still-parted metal gate and wrapped his hand around the edge, heaving the frame up and pushing it inside. He clambered through and PJ followed, grumbling about how it wasn’t safe to be trespassing in the middle of the day.

“It isn’t trespassing. Nobody lives here. God, PJ, would you chill out?”

“He asks me to chill out as we approach the doors of the asylum,” PJ said, sarcastic.

“It’s, like, three in the afternoon.”

“And?”

“And nothing is going to attack at three in the afternoon. I mean, come on, we’ve been here at midnight,” Dan laughed. “The cockroaches would have eaten us by now if they were ever planning to.”

“Sure.”

“Sure?”

“Sure, Dan,” PJ gave him a look. “Cockroaches. Sure.”

“Don’t ruin the developing inside joke. Not cool, man.”

PJ just shook his head at that, distancing himself a bit.

They walked through the reception, clambering across the scatter of rubble, and down towards the children’s ward.

“It looks different,” PJ stated.

“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “I can see a lot more stuff now. Stuff I didn’t see before. Not anything interest—mostly just dust—but still.”

“It’s strange how it doesn’t seem half as scary.”

“Hhm.”

They passed the looming entrance (that never had felt less threatening) into the ward, and Dan craned his neck into the cells as they passed them.

“Skye?” he called out.

“Come out, dude, we got you some food!” PJ’s voice floated to the same volume as his friend’s, and it rattled aimlessly off the walls.

“Hey.”

Dan jumped into PJ at the sound of a soft, but ultimately hard-pressing voice, and peered across into the cell it spawned from. There stood three children, two boys (the one on the right was significantly older than the one on the left) and a girl, all around a similar height, dressed in hospital gowns. The boy on the right, the one with matted blonde hair, had some horrific stain on the lower part of the fabric.

Dan was sure they were trying to terrify them, what with the way their eyes burned deeper holes into the pits of their mind.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” The girl demanded, sharp and unforgiving.

“Uh—We’re just—” PJ seemed at loss for words, which was not a common thing. “Just, you know. Just exploring.”

“Just, just, just,” The boy on the left chanted. “Get your words out, blood-boy.”

“ _Blood-boy_?” Dan frowned at them. All three of them were an unnerving kind-of weird, he realised, and he looked at the boy on the right with a stain on his gown. “Shouldn’t that be your name, mate? What’s with the stain?”

“You really go to the effort of using hospital gowns and fake blood to scare us?” PJ laughed, but there something underlying in it that said he wasn’t entirely comfortable.

“Fake,” The boy on the left said. “Nice to meet you, lads. I’m Bobby—Bobby Archer. This is Elliot and this here is Octavia.”

“Bobby Archer?” PJ echoed.

“Correct,” Bobby said. “Now, I believe Octavia asked you a question.”

“No, wait,” PJ shook his head and moved his finger through the air to point at Bobby. “You. Your name is Bobby Archer. Like—Like that kid? The one who was admitted here to Littlerock all those years ago? You’re seriously using his name on top of this costume thing to—”

“I said she asked you a question,” Bobby ignored, voice stern, but Dan’s heart had lifted. _Were they just fucking around?_ “Answer her, dammit.”

“I don’t even remember what you asked, Octavia,” PJ glared at her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” Octavia repeated.

PJ sighed. “We’re here to—”

“What’s it got to do with you?” Dan cut in, eyes on the girl in the middle of the trio.

“It’s got plenty to do with me. With us.”

“I think you’ll find it hasn’t—”

“I think you’ll find it _has_ ,” Elliot finally spoke. “Who were you calling for just now?”

PJ crossed his arms. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“We were pretty damn clear with it, I think,” Dan answered the boy. “Skye. Skye Clark. You know of a Skye Clark?”

“Never heard of him,” Bobby shrugged.

“Right,” Dan nodded, and his mind scampered momentarily to Skye’s whereabouts. He must be hiding. Unless he left. “So what’s with the costumes then, kids? The gowns and the blood. Come on, spit it out.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Octavia was still smiling that horrible smile.

“We would, actually,” PJ chirped. “I’d like to purchase one for the Halloween party next year. That blood looks real on you there, Elliot. Smart one.”

“It isn’t fake,” Elliot spat. “You blood-boys know nothing about this damn place. Now get the hell out before I—”

“How did you know my name?” Bobby’s voice wavered defiantly through Elliot’s. He was addressing PJ, who gave him a long stare.

“Know your name?”

“Yeah. Before. You said my name was the same as that kid. But how could you know that?” Bobby’s eyes lowered in cold suspicion. “Have you been here before?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“No, we haven’t,” Dan lied. He didn’t know why.

“Liar,” Bobby seethed. “They’ve been here before! In the night, it must have been! What did you take? What did you see?”

“Fuck off out of my personal space, _mate_ ,” PJ growled.

Dan grabbed PJ’s arm and pulled him back, snapping a, “Nothing,” at Bobby.

“We didn’t see anything,” he continued. “We came but we saw nothing.”

“You wouldn’t be back if you’d saw nothing. You came back for something,” Octavia’s eyes were small, scrunched at the edges and obviously floating on a similar wavelength as Bobby.

“No,” PJ denied. “We came back to explore. To find secrets and things for our research. I probably just heard your name on the news or in a book or—”

“My name would never be in either of those,” Bobby growled. Anger chipped away at his voice. “My name is within this building and this building only. It never got out. Never, ever. What did you find when you came here? What did you steal?”

_Steal?_

“Nothing!” PJ yelled.

“Peej,” Dan took his arm again. The air was becoming thick and suffocating and the feeling in his chest was that of a warning. “I think we need to go.”

“No!” Bobby roared, and he took a dangerous step towards PJ. “You tell me what you took! You tell me—”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Dan took the matter under his wing and addressed the enraged boy.

“You should’ve thought about that before you trespassed in here,” Elliot seemed mildly agitated.

“You can’t trespass on a land that nobody owns.”

Elliot’s lips curled into a chilling smile. “ _We_ own it, blood-boy.”

“Too right,” Bobby joined again. “This place? It’s ours. And you’ve got some explaining to do.”

Dan shuffled a few subtle steps down the corridors. “PJ, we need to leave.”

Bobby lunged down and snatched PJ’s wrist, squeezing on it tight so that he winced and squeaked in obvious agony. “You go nowhere until we say you do!” Bobby declared.

“Get the hell off me!” PJ yelled. “You’re bloody freezing, you weirdo, you’re gonna chill my blood!”

_Freezing._

“Tell me,” Bobby urged, voice sliding from a cold to a frigid state. “Tell me what you’ve taken of mine!”

“The files,” Dan spluttered, for PJ’s benefit only. “We took the patient files in the desk because—because we thought it’d be interesting to read and—”

“You get them back to us,” he forced out from behind tightly gritted teeth and slammed PJ’s wrist against the wall as he released it. “For your own damn sake, blood-boy.”

“Okay,” Dan agreed, attempting compatibility but only stumbling over caution. “Okay, we’ll come back with them. I promise we will—Come on, PJ.”

PJ, still squirming with the pain in his wrist, followed Dan in heedful backward steps out of the ward. It was only when they had turned the corner that marked the end that they started running—and, God, it would’ve taken a hell of a lot to make them stop. 

“Fucking insane!” PJ was yelling. “He’s probably broke my goddamn wrist!”

“Shut up!” Dan snapped back, chest falling hard as they charged out of the asylum and stepped strategically along the scatter of forest-bedding over the exit. He focused on the movements of his feet, assuring they didn’t get caught up in branches, and ran down the path to retrieve his bike.

“I can’t ride, Dan—” PJ sounded choked, hand gripping the injured wrist.

Dan dropped his frame back down and walked to PJ, squinting at the already discolouring skin. “Was he _that_ strong?”

“No, it was—It was weird, you know?” PJ grappled for a breath. “It wasn’t that he was squeezing too hard, it was that he was so cold.”

“I doubt the cold is bruising up your wrist, PJ,” Dan paused. He proceeded to lift both of their bikes out of the gates. “And what are you suggesting?”

“Nothing. It’s just abnormal for anyone to be that cold. The temperature might not be the thing marking me but it’s all I felt—It was sending me numb, I kid you not.”

Dan wrapped significantly gentle fingers around the skin. “What are you gonna say to your mom?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just say I fell, but I need it checked out. It’s probably sprained, if not broken,” PJ glanced back at the asylum. “We can’t come back here, Dan. If they’re camping out and waiting for us—”

“They’re not. And we have to come back.”

“Just to give back the files.”

“They can shove the files up their asses,” Dan leant down and pulled his bike up, fixing himself onto the seat. “Sideways. No way are they getting them. Can you ride? We’ll go slow.”

“Dan, I really don’t think going against the kids who just crumbled my wrist is a good idea. We have to give them the files back. Are you actually losing your mind?”

“Can you ride?” Dan repeated, ignoring.

“Yes, I can bloody ride,” PJ climbed onto his bike and weakly rested his hand on the bars. “I’m not safe hanging around you. I just had the revelation.”

“You’re not safe? Come on, I’m just being real.”

“No, you’re just being reckless.”

They travelled painfully slow, so slow that Dan’s feet remained just above the pavement.

“We have to go back there, PJ. And not to give them the files, fuck the files. We’re finding Skye,” Dan’s voice flooded with determination.

“Skye?” PJ almost laughed. “Bloody _Skye_? What has he got to do with any of this? It’s his fault we even came today and I got my wrist all screwed up.”

“It’s not his fault,” Dan sighed. “We need to go find him because he might still be back there and—”

“And you want to question him further and find out a whole load of secrets. I get your enthusiasm, Dan, but that is not the key issue right now.”

“When you’ve got your wrist bandaged up, we’ll come back. And we’ll find him. He’s gonna starve if we don’t, PJ. Did you see how thin he was?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t realise you cared more about him than me.”

“I don’t,” Dan looked back at PJ struggling to ride and gave a quick breath. “Come on, you idiot, let me help you . . . ”


	4. IV

**iv.**

PJ’s wrist was fractured. He had it wrapped up in a great bandage when Dan saw him that same night, around eleven, the time they snuck out. He let him sit on the back of his bike for the journey back down to the asylum and they spoke about what it felt like to have an X-Ray.

“It doesn’t really feel like anything,” PJ admitted.

Dan admitted he had never had one.

But he had the ‘stolen’ patient files packed neatly into his bag, ready to hand over. He’d agreed after earlier persuasion to give them back; it probably wasn’t for the best to give people what they wanted, what they demanded, but he was going to do it anyway. Because PJ said it was a good idea and PJ was the one with the fractured wrist, therefore PJ was the one with the control.

“I don’t even wanna go in.”

“Don’t then,” Dan climbed off the bike. “Stay out here. I’ll find them and give them their shit, then come straight back out.”

“It’s too dark to be alone. For you and for me.”

And so PJ came along, ski-mask and all, forcing one on Dan for safety precautions and his newly adopted motto of ‘bad atmospheres’. But even when Dan pulled the mask over his head, apprehension still gnawed at his mind. Fear was something that the piece of fabric could not prevent; fear lay resting in the folds of his brain.

“Let’s not call for them,” Dan said, when they got inside. The walls were the same sick grimy splattered in darkness that he was used to. “Let’s just look. Maybe making a lot of noise is gonna make us more vulnerable.”

“Yeah, okay,” PJ agreed quietly. “I’m all for reducing our vulnerability and potentially increasing the length of our lives. I don’t fancy dying at fourteen.”

“We won’t _die_ —Are you scared of dying?” Dan flickered the torch up to PJ’s face.

“I don’t know. Isn’t everybody?”

“I don’t think so,” Dan answered. “I think it’s more a fear of the unknown than a fear of legitimate death.”

“I’m more scared it’s gonna hurt.”

“Exactly,” Dan nodded. “The unknown. You don’t know if it’s gonna hurt or not and that scares you. For some people, it’s the most terrifying thing ever. And for some people, they crave it. They think the pain that stems from no longer living is minuscule in comparison to just living.”

“That’s suicidal people though, no?”

“I mean, I guess. You can call them that if you want. But they’re just people at the end of the day and I doubt suicidal is what they call themselves. That word is quite looming. And people throw it around like it doesn’t mean anything; like they can ridicule it because they don’t feel it,” Dan let his eyes stutter of the rubble on the floor of the ward, head buzzing with thoughts. “Psychological terms are just words, too. Some people don’t—they don’t want to label themselves and that’s fine. That should be fine. What isn’t fine is when suicidal becomes a synonym for weak.”

“No offence but,” PJ glanced at him. “Surely it is? No—No, wait that came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant it surely means someone isn’t as strong in comparison to another.”

“It has nothing to do with being weak. It has everything to do with being sick, however. Would you ever call someone with cancer weak?”

“No.”

“Well, then. It’s just like saying someone who has cancer isn’t as strong in comparison to someone who doesn’t. It’s just—It’s the same. Do you know what I mean?” Dan paused. “It’s like a little storm in your mind and it’s worse than physical pain because physical pain isn’t mental pain.”

“My PE teacher said it is,” PJ stated with a shrug. “That, like, fifty percent of pain is mental. If we set our minds to it, we can recover.”

“Okay, so think of it like this,” Dan waved his hand through the air in mannerisms to guide the explanation. “Someone’s running a marathon and they slip and sprain their ankle. Yes, it hurts, but they tell themselves repeatedly that they can get to the end. And they struggle through it because their mind is on their side and their mind is strong enough to get them through it. Now take someone who has depression or something going on in their lives that’s impacting their mental health. They want to get to the end, too. But their brain is hurting, therefore their brain cannot get them to the end because it’s the thing that’s broken. It’s like trying to fix a sprained ankle with an already sprained ankle.”

“Oh,” PJ said. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right a bit.”

Dan smiled at him. “They can’t use their mind to help them through. It’s impossible. So what do they use? A guy with a broken bone can use his mind as a substitute, but what can a mentally ill person use? Are they weak for not knowing the answer to that question?”

“Suppose not,” PJ shrugged. “If I knew you understood this concept in such depth, I’d have never challenged you on it.”

Dan laughed. “I don’t, mate. I just—It interests me. And it’s just psychology in itself, to study how people react to mental illness. There’s an obvious difference to how we tackle pain we can see and pain we can’t. And how we deem the one we can’t as less. Like it lacks something that makes it inadequate.”

“Do you think most of the patients here were suicidal?”

“Probably. But it depends on how bad the suffering was. We still don’t know the methods of treatment, though I presume it was mental torture.”

“Because mental torture is treatment.”

“They thought it was.”

There was a muffled buzz and PJ reached a hand into his pocket to retrieve his phone. He clicked the button on the top and it lit up, casting light across his face.

“Who is it?” Dan inquired, not bothering to peer over your shoulder. “Your mom?”

“No, Chris,” PJ sighed. “He’s asking why we’re not online. They’re having some discussion about the new My Chemical Romance album.”

“They’re dead in the gutter,” Dan said the words, then cringed.

“Jesus, man. I thought you were some addict.”

“Yeah, I am. I inject their songs into my blood, don’t get me wrong, it’s just—I’m trying out some coping mechanisms here. Without them, I mean. It’s only been a year and yet they’re back again with a greatest hits compilation album. As if I need anymore pain.”

“ _May Death Never Stop You_ ,” PJ recited. “I don’t know why Chris is now just picking up on this anyway. The album’s been out since March.”

“He couldn’t afford to get it because his mom wasn’t giving him any pocket money. I haven’t listened to it yet either, it’s just on my shelf. These things take mental preparation.”

“Indeed they do,” PJ stared back at his phone. “Well, he’s obviously gone out and bought it because he’s talking about it. What shall I tell him?”

“I’m still sick in bed and you’re at your grandma’s or something. You’ll be on later.”

“Dan, it’s eleven o’clock.” 

“PJ, I don’t care. This is Chris. He’ll fall for it. Maybe not Cat, but he will.”

“Whatever,” PJ typed the words out on his phone, giving in.

“We’ve got time to think of some excuse. But right now we’re kinda busy looking for these three nut-jobs—” Dan’s voice dwindled away as his eyes wandered up instinctively and found Skye standing before them. He was in the same clothes as he had been the day before and he was matched with the same terrified expression. Maybe that was just his natural look.

“Oh, hey!” PJ grinned at him, pulling his mask over his head when he saw Dan had too. “You’re back!”

“I never went anywhere,” Skye murmured. “What do you mean?”

“You weren’t here when we came today. We thought maybe—”

“You came today? In the day?” Skye’s face became structured by a dash of complete horror. Dan struggled to decode anything in it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“What—” Skye stumbled. “What did you see?”

“These three kids,” PJ answered, and Skye’s breath hitched audibly. “Proper fucking weirdos they were, mate. Have you seen them before? Two boys and a girl. Are they still here?”

“No, they’re—They usually come here during the day. I’ve seen them before, yeah,” It was a real challenge trying to understand what was hiding under Skye’s actions and words. His mannerisms were weird within themselves, his voice a frightened gentle, and his sentences oddly strung. Like there was something weighing in between them.

“Bobby, Octavia and Elliot,” PJ continued on. “Bobby—You met him?”

Skye nodded.

“He’s a right one, isn’t he? You see this?” PJ held up his arm, fitted in a sort-of sling. “He did this to me today.”

“He hurt you?” Skye’s words were shadowed with a gasp.

“Only went and fractured my bloody wrist. I was at the hospital for hours this evening, the waiting system at those places is complete _shit_ —” 

“He really hurt you? Really?”

“Yeah, can you not see the evidence?” PJ waved his wrist through the air again. “He was cold—Have you ever noticed? You probably haven’t, but he is. He’s so cold—like _chilling_ —and that was the worst pain. It was like he was pulling the blood out of my wrist or something, it was all going numb.”

Dan rolled his eyes at his friend’s stupidity and asked Skye, “Where were you today?”

“Here. Just here.”

“Really? We didn’t see you,” Dan frowned. “Were you hiding from them?”

“Um—Yeah,” Skye looked uncomfortable. “I suppose. I don’t like them a whole lot.”

“Neither do I,” PJ grumbled. “We only came back because we had to give them the files.”

“Files?”

“Patient files. We took them to have a read of a couple days ago and they demanded we give them back, so. That’s that. I don’t want another fractured wrist.”

“You took patient files?” Skye gaped between them. “How many?”

“All the one’s up in the office,” Dan replied. “Fifteen of them. Do you know where the kids are?”

“They’re not here,” Skye looked certain. “They left. Don’t give them the files, just come put them back into the office. They can find them.”

And with that, he turned, wandering down the corridor. Dan and PJ followed obediently after and Dan wondered why the kids had been so persistent to get them back, if they obviously didn’t belong to them. The identification thing was mad, he thought. They were using the names of insane children and dressing in bloody hospitals gowns and damaging people’s bones like it was their _job._

Weird.

Very, very weird.

Dan and PJ slipped the files back under the desk where they had found them—containing the profiles of Bobby, Octavia and Elliot—and stepped back.

“You should be careful with those kids,” Dan told Skye. “I don’t trust—or like—them at all. They’re so strange. They said their names were the same as some kids from those files, you know? Have you read them?”

Skye shook his head.

Dan shrugged. “You should. Interesting read.”

“Hey, wait a second,” PJ was still kneeling down on the floor by the desk and had an open file in his hand, shining down the light from his phone onto the paper. “Come look at this. Bobby’s record.”

Dan peered down over his shoulder to the picture attached in the corner. “What?”

“What the hell do you mean _what_? Don’t you think they look the same?”

“Who?”

“This Bobby and the one we saw today,” PJ sighed. “They’re, like, practically identical. I mean this is a little blurry but you can still make it out. Dammit, how didn’t I think to look back at the photograph?”

“PJ, they’re not identical. They look _kinda_ the same.”

“What if we saw a ghost?” PJ’s eyes were wide. “What if a ghost almost broke my bloody wrist?”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Dan stood back upright, shoulder brushing with Skye’s.

“I am _not_.”

“What happened to me being the idiot? The one who thinks everything’s weird and doesn’t think rationally?”

“Excuse me, this is a high possibility. Dan, you must see it. They look almost exactly the same. I thought you of all people—you know, being the irrational idiot—would agree.”

“Maybe Bobby’s just trying to look like the kid in the picture,” Skye suggested quietly, and his words danced at the back of Dan’s neck in their proximity. “You know, match his identity. He’s a bit of a weirdo.”

“Well, I think I’m right,” PJ scoffed, and reached a hand in to flit through for another couple of files. He opened one and Dan read Octavia Janet’s name in bold capitals at the top.

“Guys, look,” PJ was pointing at the picture. “She’s the same, too! She’s like her twin! How can you not think anything about this is questionable?”

“Because you’re asking plenty of questions yourself,” Dan answered, then turned to Skye. “Hey, I have some food in my bag for you. I didn’t take it out from when we came today. Do you want some?”

“I’ll, uh—I’ll save it for later,” Skye stuttered, face written with obvious flattery.

“Okay, but take it now,” Dan shrugged his bag off his back and dug a hand inside, pulling out two large packets of sweets. “It isn’t much, but kids our age like this stuff more anything so I thought . . . You know.”

“Thank you,” Skye whispered, fingers taking hold of the bags.

“Do you like them?”

“Yeah, they’re great—Really great,” His lips drew into a proper smile. “Thanks so much.”

“It’s no problem. They were my brother’s anyway.”

“You have a brother?” Skye asked.

“Yeah. He’s a little shit sometimes—He’s called Adrian.”

Skye smiled again, taking some humour from the words, and his eyes faltered for a moment over Dan’s. There was a pull of gravity that ached in the space between them and Dan tingled up from his toes to fingers as he drew lines between the smudges of intense blue.

“Elliot’s is practically the same too,” PJ sliced through the bubble of atmosphere closing in on the boys behind him. “I don’t see how you guys don’t see it.”

“We do. We just choose not jump to the conclusion that they’re all ghosts, or whatever.”

“We,” Skye repeated, under his breath.

Dan looked at him. “Huh?”

He just shook his head and pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, chewing down on the skin.

“Why not?” PJ shoved the files back into their places. “It adds up, kinda. They called us blood-boys.”

“And that proves what, exactly?”

“Proves they think we’re different to them,” PJ clicked his fingers. “Says a lot in my mind.”

“Whatever, can we just talk about something else? You’re chatting shit.”

“No, I want to talk about this. You know what, let’s go home,” PJ took a few steps to the door. “I wanna research some more on these kids. I know they said the names had never gotten out of the asylum but that’s surely impossible—We can look through history books at school on Monday, too.”

“For what? Proof on your supernatural theories?” Dan frowned. “Good look on that, PJ.”

“I want to find out more, Dan. Dig a bit deeper because it feels like we’ve hardly touched the surface,” he turned in the doorway. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Catch you later, Skye.”

He moved out of sight and Dan watched him go, knowing he wouldn’t venture far down the corridor alone and without a real source of light.

“I’m sorry for him,” he said to Skye. “We have an equal share of insanity. Sometimes one just shows it more than the other.”

“You’re nice,” Skye smiled again. “I like you guys. He won’t find anything about this place though, if he goes looking around and stuff.”

“Yeah, I know. I think he knows, too. We’re just desperate for something to come up; we want some adventure.”

“You’re probably looking in the wrong place,” Skye said softly.

“Yeah, probably,” Dan chewed his lip and paused as his memory bubbled something to the surface. “Hey, uh, how do you know our bikes are cool?”

Skye blinked. “Sorry?”

“Our bikes. You said when we were leaving last time that they were cool. PJ insisted you didn’t but I know you did.”

Skye shifted on his feet, hands digging into the pockets of the red hoodie on his back. It hung loosely on him and dipped down messily over his shoulder. He was quite the picture.

_Pretty._

“I have a camera,” Skye confessed, a bit shameful. “The security one in the corner of that room behind the cabinet here. It works.”

“You were watching us?”

“No, I just look around sometimes. There tends to be a lot of little animals you can see and I like to look at them—I’ll show you them maybe, one day?” he halted to smile. “I wasn’t spying on you. I promise. I just saw you when I was looking out.”

“Ah,” Dan nodded. “That makes sense. And then you hid when you saw us coming in?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, okay. Well, we aren’t anything to be scared of, I presume you’ve figured out,” Dan laughed and idled on his feet. “I should probably get going after PJ.”

“Okay,” Skye glanced at the door, then to Dan’s eyes. “You’re gonna come back, yeah?”

“Of course. Soon, no doubt,” Dan walked across the room and lifted his hand in a sort-of wave at the intriguing boy. “You should eat something. You’re real thin.”

Skye let his eyes flutter down to his stomach before peering back up. “Okay. I will.”

Dan gave him a smile that was terrifyingly fragile. “See you, Skye.”

“Bye, Dan.”

::

Dan fell asleep that night listening to _May Death Never Stop You_ and letting his mind scramble to arrange the scattered pieces of a certain blue-eyed boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skye’s weird. Don’t we know it? The kids are, too. What makes them all so? I’ve had so much fun writing this and I can only hope everyone will enjoy it half as much.


	5. V

**v.**

Sunday was dull and gloom. It rained heavy for the majority of the day and crackled thunder across the little town. Dan communicated with his friends online, sparking conversations on the album and the band and why Cat was just uneducated in the aspect of music, since she wasn’t particularly a fan.

_I’m sorry, I just don’t have time to cry over pretty band members when I have exams to study for._

Dan rolled his eyes at the message she typed out late in the afternoon, and spent the rest of his day watching movies. They didn’t go to the asylum because of the weather, naturally, and PJ failed to mention his ‘ghost’ theory even once. Dan thought maybe he’d dropped it entirely.

On Monday, they arranged to meet at the library at lunchtime as a pair to do some more research. As much as Dan tried to break away from Chris and Cat, he couldn’t manage to, and they ended up just being baggage that he was dragging along with him.

The first thing PJ said when he caught sight of them was: “So you’ve told them?”

Dan’s chest deflated and he face-palmed.

“Told us what?” Chris chirped. “He hasn’t told us anything.”

“Ohhh,” PJ dragged, taking a step back when realising his mistake. “Okayy then.”

“Nice one, PJ,” Dan glared at him.

“What’s going on here?” Cat dug her claws into the situation, always just an over-the-top stubborn. Dan knew they were fucked. She wasn’t going to let the traces of this break free until she got the full picture; that was her way.

“Nothing, just—”

“Dan,” she put a hand in the air. “You know keeping secrets is a burden on mental health. We discussed this just last week in psychology.”

“Stop peer-pressuring me,” he sighed. “I was gonna tell you anyway—Sit down.”

Dan took a seat in the quaint library and the others followed him, dotting themselves around a square table. He drummed his fingers against the surface in a physical expression of him reaching a bit of a dead end. He laid out the events of the last couple of days in his mind and decided to start with, “You probably won’t believe us,” because it seemed so fitting.

“Why?” Chris’ eyes danced. “Is it something epic? Have you found something strange?”

“Kind-of,” Dan glanced to PJ. “We don’t really know yet. Maybe.”

“Okay, so . . . What is it?”

“We went to Littlerock on Thursday,” Dan almost blurted, and the information floated into the air surrounding the table in an attempt to suffocate them all. Cat gasped, almost, and Chris laughed, smacking his hands on the table.

“What? No way! Are you serious?”

Dan nodded.

“What did you find?” Cat looked intrigued.

“Not a lot on Thursday, really. We went into the children’s ward and found some patient files and—”

“Patient files?” Chris interrupted. “Do you still have them?”

“No, we gave them back.”

“You gave them back? Who the hell to?”

PJ kicked Chris under the table. “Can you just listen?”

Chris held is hands up in defence, silenced, and Dan continued. “So we took the files on Thursday. We read through most of them—I mean, we’ve read them all now—but not every single one on that day. Anyway, I wanted to go back to the asylum because . . . Well, I don’t really know. There was just—You know when there’s just something, and that’s about as specific as you can be? It was like that. Just something. And it was bugging me, so I wanted to go back.”

“And you did?”

“We did. And in the warden’s office, where we found the files, we also found a little room. The entrance was hidden away behind a cabinet and it was so weird. So different to the rest of the ward. There was a security camera and a lightbulb that worked.”

Cat was frowning. “And that’s weird because . . . ?”

“Okay, yeah. Sorry, I forgot to mention,” Dan waved his hand, dismissing. “In all of the cells, the bulbs had been smashed and the lights weren’t working. It was pitch black, pretty much, everywhere. But the bulb was completely functioning in this room, and it was bright as _fuck_. As though somebody had just fitted it as a new one.”

“Right,” she replied. “What next?”

“Next, we see this guy,” PJ took over, voice melodramatic. “About our age, he was. He had really pale skin and these massive blue eyes and we looked at him and he ran. He fucking _bolted_. So we chased him, caught him, and found out his name’s Skye.”

“ _Skye_? What kinda name’s that for a dude?” Chris almost laughed.

“He’s really cool,” Dan’s words came defensive. “He’s the good part of the story. The best.”

“Right, well,” Chris leant back on his chair. “What’s the bad part? The worst?”

“We found these three kids when we went Saturday. We went back because we wanted to give food to Skye because he’s squatting there—brave guy—and he’s only really eating scraps. Just what he can find. And so he needed something that could actually pass as food,” Dan momentarily thought about the sweets and the soft smile Skye had given him when he pulled them out of his bag. “But when we were there calling for him, these three kids pop out. Bobby, Octavia and Elliot, they called themselves. Two boys and a girl. They were dressed in hospital gowns and this Elliot had a blood stain on the corner of the fabric.”

“Fake?” Cat added.

Dan looked at PJ, who was shaking his head, and decided to ignore the question. “The kids were off their heads on something, is what I’m trying to say. They were acting as though they were deranged or something and their names—Yeah, they took them from the patient files. These kids that were locked up there years ago.”

“They’re taking their identities?” Chris deciphered.

Dan nodded, before PJ could get anything else in. “I think so. There was something wrong, either way. Bobby fractured PJ’s wrist.”

“What?” Chris and Cat stared at PJ.

“Yeah,” he laid it on the table.

Cat’s eyes were wide. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m trying to keep it on the low. I don’t want any fussing, you know,” he shrugged. “That guy was just mad. They weren’t there when we went back later that night to hand over the files. It was just Skye and he agreed they were weird. But, the most important part of the story is the fact that these kids are ghosts.”

Cat exaggerated a sigh. “Bloody hell, I was wondering how long it would take for that come up.”

“No, seriously,” PJ insisted. “They look almost exactly the same as the kids they said they were. I looked at the photographs on their files. Also, Bobby was goddamn freezing when he did this to my wrist. A kind-of cold that’s hard to explain. A kind that just—that makes you ache.”

“That doesn’t prove he’s a ghost, PJ,” Cat said, monotone.

“Exactly,” Dan folded his arms.

“You guys didn’t feel it. I can’t even describe what it was like, just horrible. The cold was the worst part, I couldn’t feel him squeezing me at all. It was the worst thing ever.”

“I believe you, man,” Chris bumped his fist on the table with PJ’s and they shared a wide smile. “Ghosts for the win. Is that all that happened?”

“Yeah,” Dan nodded. “We came here today to look for some more stuff on the kids.”

“We can help,” Cat offered. “I don’t exactly believe in the paranormal thing but it isn’t a reason not to do some research. Especially if you’re so certain on this, PJ.”

“I am.”

“Well, then. Write their names down for us and we can split up to find some old books and search for them.”

So they did. Chris and PJ departed to one side of the library and Dan and Cat to the other. Cat came here a lot before school, so she knew where to find the history books. Her finger ran irregularly over the spines of them as Dan stood behind and watched.

“I saw a couple books on old asylums around here not long back,” she narrated her thoughts. “I don’t remember seeing Littlerock when I flicked through, but it’s gotta be here. It’s real close to the town.”

“I know, but nobody wants to talk about it.”

Cat looked at him. “Pardon?”

“Littlerock. Nobody ever wants to talk about it, they usually just change the subject or tell me to leave it alone.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Honest. You try to bring it up into conversation and see what happens.”

“That’s just bizarre. Why would nobody want to talk about it? It’s right next door—Here it is,” Cat tugged out a book, standing back and opening it under both their gazes. They followed the context, eyes searching down the list for Littlerock, and then she flitted to the correct page.

The writing was dated and the pictures were the same black and white vintage they were online. Dan was sure he’d seen them all now, there was just so little of them. One of the front gardens, one from the path outside, one of the front of the asylum, one of the male’s ward, one of the canteen and one of the reception.

“I’ve already seen all that,” Dan sighed and turned back to the shelves. “Was that other book in the same section?”

“No, wait, listen to this,” Cat grabbed his arm. “ _Littlerock was just shut down permanently in 1979_ —”

“Yeah, Cat, I know that—”

“— _After the unexplained death of a child_.”

“Wait, what?” Dan took hold of the side of the book, reading the sentence over and over again in his head and staring at it so intensely that the words were blurry.

“I take it that’s the first time you’ve heard that.”

“Yeah, I—I knew it closed down in 1979. November, specifically, but PJ and I couldn’t find the reason why on the Internet. It isn’t anywhere online.”

“It’s all, like, top secret?” Cat asked.

“A bit. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. It’s just like . . . It just isn’t mentioned. Like it’s been cut out, or something. Like here,” Dan’s finger wavered over the word child. “See how it just cuts off and goes onto something else?”

“Yeah,” The word was weighted in Cat’s voice with some form of understanding. “It’s like when somebody mentions something briefly in conversation but you know they don’t wanna talk about it anymore so you don’t ask and you just leave it alone. What else do you know about Littlerock?”

“Um,” Dan pondered for a moment. “Pretty much just what’s here. That it ran through these periods time of time. Also, it stayed in the same family. The Lesters. It was opened by William Lester, then passed down to his son, Grant.”

“Right,” Cat chewed her lip. “And have you searched these guys?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing much at all. It all just feels like it’s generic information, do you know what I mean? Like they’ve all been printed by the same person and so the knowledge is just theirs and it’s naturally limited.”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying when I read this. It’s actually kind-of eerie, the way it’s written,” she paused. “Do you know anything else?”

“Something happened in the four years between 1974 to 1978.”

“What do you mean?”

“PJ found this article that said something happened during that time. Journalists were, like, sent away when they wanted information or whatever. It all became really classified and everybody assumed something was going on.”

“Understandable,” Cat evened. “If some place was open to the public and didn’t keep anything major hidden away, then suddenly they stop giving out information, we’d all probably think the same. Especially a place like a mental asylum. That’s really suspicious.”

“This entire thing is suspicious. I mean, maybe we’re reading into it too much or something but . . . But surely we’re not the only ones who think it’s weird. There must be some historian out there—probably in the town—who feels the same and wants answers.”

“True. We could put out an ask on the forums,” Cat suggested. “See if any of the history nerds on there know anything.”

“Okay,” Dan nodded. “I really just want to find something. Something that’ll defeat PJ’s stupid theories and make reality add up a bit more.”

“I think,” Cat swallowed and took a breath. “I think maybe something terrible happened there.”

“How do you mean?”

“In those four years. Something that resulted in the death of that child. I don’t know why, but I keep thinking it could be experiments. Terrible ones that went wrong.” 

Experiments. Dan thought for a moment about the possibility and wondered why he hadn’t yet considered it.

“Are you alright there, sweethearts?” The school’s librarian, silver-haired Mrs Arran, poked her head around the corner. “What are you looking at?”

“Oh, just some history,” Cat answered in a remarkably simple tone and closed the book, sliding it back into its place.

“Ah,” Mrs Arran approached. “Revision, I take it?”

“Kinda,” Dan shrugged, and his thoughts buzzed. “Actually, Mrs Arran, um—Would you mind answering some questions for us?”

“Oh. I can do my best, dear.”

“Do you know the asylum just outside of town? Littlerock.”

Mrs Arran seemed taken aback at the question, and she flinched a little around the name. “I find it hard to believe you children are having an assignment on that place.”

“No, we’re not. It’s not for an assignment,” Dan shook his head. “We’re just interested.”

“Well, what on earth are you digging around there for? It’s a dangerous place, is Littlerock. Kids like you shouldn’t be messing with things like that.”

“Things like what, Mrs Arran?” Cat inquired slowly.

“Oh, you know,” her voice died down to a murmur. “Bad things. Horrible things. Words I won’t ever say.”

“Ghosts?” Dan spoke.

“Oh, no! Nothing like that,” Mrs Arran shook her head. “No, something real. Something very real.”

Dan frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s very well that you don’t, my love,” she paused to rearrange two books. “Please, for your own sakes, don’t go digging up things about . . . about that place.”

“But nobody ever says anything about it,” Dan continued to talk as she walked away shaking her head and muttering to herself.

“Mrs Arran!” he called, and his voice rang through the library’s signature quietude. “Nobody ever—Why does nobody ever—Why is it so bad?! What happened there?! _What happened there_?—”

“Dan, stop it,” Cat shushed him, hands on his shoulders.

“No, I won’t stop it. I need to find out what’s going on here—I need answers, Cat, I can’t keep pussyfooting around this shit—”

“Okay, I get it’s frustrating. But why the hell are you acting like it’s a matter of life or death? Dan, it’s just an asylum. A _closed_ asylum. It’s a bit mysterious and we’ll figure it all out in the end, there’s no need to—”

“You don’t understand,” Dan spat. “It’s not just in the past. It’s happening now, too. There’s a load of kids there that are obviously not right in the head and—”

“And what does that have to do with the asylum itself? They’re just idiots messing about.”

“I’m just saying. Here me out,” Dan ran a hand over his hair. “What if PJ’s right?”

Cat stared at him, disbelieving, and then shook her head. “I thought you were better than that.”

“You sound like my mom,” Dan scoffed.

“Ghosts don’t exist, Dan. Wake up.”

“A child’s death got the place closed down and then we run into a bunch of kids, freezing cold and one in a bloody hospital gown!” Dan yelled. “I’m just trying to piece things together and right now this seems like the only logical explanation! You got any better ideas?”

“What the hell is happening here?” Chris’ voice sliced like a knife through the tense line of Dan’s voice. He was stood by PJ, looking at them anxiously.

“Dan suddenly believes PJ’s ghost crap,” Cat glared at them.

“Seriously?” PJ angled his tone up in surprise. “Yes! Welcome to the dark side, Dan. We got cookies and—”

“Shut up,” Dan snapped, tightening his hands into fists. “I’m not joking around, man. I’ve literally turned to paranormal theories to explain what the hell is happening here.”

“Alright, alright,” PJ drew his eyebrows down in a look of concern. “Are you okay?”

“He’s losing his damn mind, is what he is,” Cat said. “He was yelling after Mrs Arran when she didn’t give him answers—Did you hear him?”

“What brought that on? Did you find something?” Chris asked him.

“No, we found _shit_. Just that some kid died and that’s why the place closed down,” Dan could feel some sort of ache inside of him. He was starting to get sick of the constant repetition of events. It was always just an I don’t know or a look of I’m not going to answer that. Nobody wanted to answer anything that he had to ask; it was like he was calling out in an empty pit and there was no echo.

“Well, we didn’t find anything either. Nothing on the kids at all; I searched their names on my phone, too, and nothing,” PJ replied. “I don’t know how much longer I can go without answers.”

“I’m driving myself mad,” Dan threaded his fingers through his hair again. “I need to just—I need to figure out what’s happening. What’s with the kids? And why are people so damn frightened of talking about the asylum?”

“I told him to put an ask out on the forums later, just for more information,” Cat told the other two.

“That’s a good idea,” PJ smiled at her and put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. “See? No need to freak out. Somebody’ll know something on there, mate. We’ll find out what kid died—see if we can defeat the ghost theory—and find out why it got the place shut down. ’Cause there must’ve been something horrible about it.”

“I’m worried about him,” Dan suddenly blurted, hands around the back of his neck.

“Who?”

“Skye. What if he’s not safe in there? Those kids are dangerous and there’s something that’s obviously in that asylum to have got it shut down.”

“Yeah, but,” PJ searched Dan’s face. “But nothing physical. Nothing that could harm him.”

“People act like it’s some dark entity. Like it’s completely and utterly horrific and as much as they might be talking about what happened in the past—what if it’s still happening? What if whatever secrets kept locked up there didn’t get out when all the people did?”

“You mean something bad could be in there with him?” Chris spoke.

“Yeah,” Dan paused, taking a moment to try the words on his mind’s tongue before saying them. “If we’re gonna do this, all of us, we have to act fast. Because Skye hasn’t got anywhere else to go and I think staying in that place has a time limit.”

::

The first thing Dan did when he got home was post an ask on the forums.

 **danisnotonfire:** anybody got any information on a child’s death that closed down Littlerock Mental Asylum?

And he waited.

“You didn’t do my homework last night,” Adrian burst into the room, crumbling a piece of paper in his fist.

“Not my fault,” Dan looked over his laptop. “You said you’d get it to me and you didn’t.”

“Well if has to be in tomorrow, sucks for you,” Adrian dropped the paper on Dan’s bed. “Do it for me or I’ll tell mom when she gets home from work.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Downstairs,” Adrian headed to the door. “Just do the homework, Dan.”

The door shut behind him with a soft click and Dan rolled his eyes. He pushed back the messy corners, feeling a spark of irritation at the slapdash folding, and rested it on his bedside. He stood from his bed then and departed the room also, winding down the stairs to find his father sitting in the living-room eating a bowl of pasta.

“Oh, thanks for dinner,” Dan sarcastically gestured to the food.

His father glanced down and then back up. “I haven’t eaten lunch today yet, this isn’t dinner. There’s a pizza in the oven for you and your brother.”

“Dad,” Dan pressed, when his father looked back to the TV.

“What, Dan?”

“Can I ask you some questions?”

“Good God,” His father shuffled along the sofa. “Yes. Sit. But make it quick, I want to watch this.”

“Okay,” Dan sat down and pulled his feet up, sitting on them cross-legged. “It’s about Littlerock.”

“Dan—”

“No, please. Let me finish,” Pause. “I know about why it was closed down and the two guys that owned it and those four years where nobody knew anything and—”

“Daniel,” Dan’s father put his bowl down on the coffee table before them, voice stern. “This needs to stop.”

“But, _Dad_ —”

“No. You cannot keep asking about that place. I understand that you’re interested in these things and you’re a little historian in the making but this is something you’re going to have to let go.”

“Why?” Dan demanded.

“Because it isn’t safe,” His father looked directly into the brown of his eyes. “Do you hear me? Littlerock and its past are dangerous, dangerous things to be messing around with.”

Dan felt bile rise in the back of his throat at the warning. “Just tell me what makes it so bad, and I won’t ever ask you anything ever again.”

“You said yourself. A child died.”

“So it’s true?”

“I don’t know, Dan, is it?”

Dan crossed his arms stubbornly. “I’m not gonna go away until you tell me.”

“Tell you what? What in God’s name do you want to know?”

“Who was the kid?”

At that, Mr. Howell seemed to slow, and he looked at Dan with threads of something unsettling sewn into his expression. “We aren’t talking about this anymore,” he finalised with an aching slowness. “Don’t you dare go around asking those types of questions.”

“Why not?”

“You’re pushing it, Dan.”

“If I push you far enough, will you tell me?”

“No,” he snapped. “Now get out of my sight, or I’m gonna lose it with you.”

“Dad, please tell me. It’s important. Nobody else is going to and I can’t find anything on the Internet.”

“That’s because that kind-of information doesn’t belong on a place like the Internet. It isn’t something to be thrown around and tampered with just for fun, like you’re doing.”

Dan wanted to laugh. Fun. He wished he was having goddamn fun.

“I’m just interested in it,” he lied through his teeth.

“Well, don’t be. Or you’re gonna find yourself in a very nasty situation.”

When Dan got back upstairs, huffing and puffing as he went, he checked the forums still open on his laptop to see if his question had been answered.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen as his mouse hovered over the recently asked box. There was nothing there.

Nothing.

“What the fuck?” he murmured, checking out his profile and finding it, too, lacked the existence of the question.

Dan didn’t understand. He typed it out and he posted it. He knew he did.

 **danisnotonfire:** {reposted cause idk wtf happened} anybody got any information on a child’s death that closed down Littlerock Mental Asylum?

And, again, he waited. To kill a bit of time, he scrawled correct answers into the boxes of his brother’s homework sheet on the Victorian era. He knew they were right because he was a complete history nerd; he knew details on the subject that the majority of history teachers wouldn’t know. He knew the ins and outs, the good and the bad. And he thought maybe this was why Littlerock had taken such control over his mind.

Because he didn’t know anything about it. At least, not anything that he could be sure on.

When Dan had completed the homework, he folded it back up and left it on his pillow as a reminder to hand over to Adrian. Then, he subconsciously moved back to his laptop and scrolled down for the ask.

When he saw it had disappeared this time, he felt a strange burst in the pit of his stomach. Like the feeling you get when the music starts to open a horror movie. And he could feel the distant murmur of you really shouldn’t as repeated the same message and sent it to the same forum.

 **danisnotonfire:** {reposted AGAIN} anybody got any information on a child’s death that closed down Littlerock Mental Asylum?

This time, he watched. He waited. He didn’t let his eyes stutter once from the bold text until—

Until _bam._

It disappeared. Right before his eyes, he watched the message delete itself. And he scrambled again to the post something! button to continue the cycle, but something stopped him.

A small private message notification rolled up at the bottom of his screen.

 **anonymous:** STOP

Stop.

Dan stared at the word like there was truth pushed into the spaces between the letters. He stared at it with such intensity that he felt sick. He clicked back onto the forums, where he could see PJ was active, and typed out:

 **danisnotonfire:** peej ring me

 **kickthepj:** why?? you got something??

 **danisnotonfire:** stop. not on here. just do it.

Dan’s phone didn’t get through one ring before he cut it off.

“Dan, what’s up?”

“There’s something weird happening,” he was breathing abnormal. _Stop, stop, stop._

“Dude, have you been MIA the past few days? There’s quite a bit of weird stuff happening.”

“No, no,” Dan rushed. “I posted the ask on the forum about the death of the kid and it keeps getting deleted.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said.”

“You’re not deleting it? You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive. I just got this message from ‘anonymous’ saying stop. Like, just that word. A single word,” Dan’s voice shook. “The hell does it mean? Should I post again?”

“Yeah,” PJ said slowly, as if he wasn’t sure. “Yeah, post again. And stay on the phone.”

Dan’s fingers typed out the words in exactly the same order, strung in exactly the same way, and his index hovered over the enter button. He closed his eyes when he pressed it, and the ask popped up on the front page.

 **danisnotonfire:** {reposted} anybody got any information on a child’s death that closed down Littlerock Mental Asylum?

“Okay, I can see it,” PJ said down the phone. “Now let’s just stay calm and watch.”

The message remained still on the page for around three minutes. Dan repeatedly clicked the refresh button, and so did PJ, but it failed to disappear this time. Nothing much happened with it, at least not until they got a reply:

 **yellowwall:** Littlerock, East South Tower Elm Road

“Did this idiot literally just send us the address?” PJ had obviously seen the reply, too. “And what kind-of username is that? _Yellowwall_?”

“It is the address, but it’s all jumbled,” Dan read over the response again. “I don’t know why though.”

And, right after he had finished his sentence, the original message was deleted.

“Fuck, it’s gone.”

“Yeah, it has on mine too,” PJ said. “Dammit, what the hell?”

 **anonymous:** LEAVE IT ALONE

“Leave it alone,” Dan echoed.

“What?”

“Another anonymous message. _Leave it alone_. What do I do?”

“You leave it alone,” PJ laughed. “Show the messages Chris tomorrow before school, and he might be able to figure out where they came from. He’s good with that stuff.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dan sighed, shutting his laptop screen. “Are we going to see Skye tonight?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m pretty tired.”

“Too tired for an adventure?” Dan settled himself down on his bed.

“Definitely. You can still go though, if you have the balls. Take Chris.”

“I think I’ll just go alone.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah. Well, I wanna check up on Skye,” Dan chewed on his lip. “See if he’s okay and hasn’t been eaten by Bobby.”

“Let me know if you find pieces of him.”

“Bloody hell, Peej.”

“Like his red hoodie or something. And his red shoes. Damn, his clothes are great.”

“They’re cool,” Dan pictured the boy in his mind and his lips curled at the corners instinctively. “Are you sure you don’t wanna come?”

“Nah, let me be lazy for once. I’ll keep an eye on the forums.”

Dan sighed. “Alright, then. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Take a mask with you and text me when you get back home. I’ll probably be asleep but at least I can see if you’re alive when I wake up tomorrow morning.”

“Excellent example of a friend right here.”

“Hey,” PJ scoffed around the word, then Dan heard the smile in his voice. “Just let me know, mate. Stay safe.”

“Thanks. I will.”


	6. VI

**vi.**

The asylum was predictably different when Dan was alone. Silence rang somewhere deep in his ears, pulsing softly in time with his heart. He wandered down the ward with a torch and a mask (in his pocket) and found Skye sitting huddled with blankets in the corner of the secret room, lights off.

“Hey,” Dan shone the torch at him and gave him a half-wave.

“Oh, hello,” Skye sat upright, rubbing his eyes. “Dan.”

“Skye,” Dan smiled. “I didn’t know where you’d be, so I just wandered down here. PJ couldn’t come tonight, he’s too tired.”

“That’s okay.”

Dan nodded. He walked slowly across the room and sat down, crossing his legs beside Skye. He let the torch sit between them to provide just enough light. “How are you?”

Skye blinked. “Me?”

“Yeah,” Dan nudged his shoulder softly. “You.”

“Oh, um—I’m good. Yeah. Are you?”

“Good.”

“Did you go to school today?”

Dan nodded. “It was shit.”

“What did you learn?” Skye settled back against the wall. “Anything good?”

“Uh,” Dan pushed through the mess in his mind to the day’s lessons. “We learnt some Greek Mythology.”

“What sort?”

“Theseus and the Minotaur.”

“Oh,” Skye paused. “What’s that about then?”

Dan gave him a look. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Because—Well, I ramble a bit. Everyone says so. I don’t wanna bore you.”

“You won’t,” Skye shook his head. “Promise. I want you to tell me, it’s interesting.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah,” Skye said gently. “It’s been a while since I heard a story.”

“Well, okay,” They shared an adorning smile that resulted in a moment’s silence, before Dan began with: “So, Theseus and the Minotaur. There’s a horrible monster in a labyrinth that eats people called the Minotaur. A labyrinth is kinda like a maze-thing and the whole point is that you can’t get out. Anyway, so here’s this guy, Theseus, and he thinks he’s all something. He tells the King he can defeat the Minotaur but the King knows he hasn’t got a chance, and even if he did manage to, he wouldn’t be able to get out.”

“Because it’s impossible to?”

Dan nodded, smiling at the way Skye’s eyes danced as he followed the story. “But Theseus is in love with the King’s daughter, the princess, and she gives him some string to take into the labyrinth with him. So he can find his way out when he’s defeated the Minotaur. Before he travels over, his father asks for something. He says that, when the boat is travelling back, he will see the sails first and so he wants them to answer his question. Whether his son has lived or not. He wants white sails for life and black sails for death. Follow?”

Skye nodded.

“Everything goes to plan with Theseus in the labyrinth. He kills the Minotaur and gets out using the string the princess gave. They travel back, but the captain forgets to change the sails from black to white. Theseus’ father sees the colour of the sails and, thinking his son has died, jumps into the water and dies.”

“But Theseus was okay.”

“Exactly. But he trusted the colour of the sail, and their system let him down.”

“That’s sad,” Skye frowned. “But I liked it. You’re good at telling stories, Dan.”

Dan felt a flattered smile spread across his face and cast in a light shade over his cheeks. “Not like I wrote it or anything. But thanks, mate.”

“You’re good at telling it though. You make it all sad and happy in the right places. A good kind-of dramatic,” Skye nodded at him. “Is that all you did today?”

“Yeah, pretty much. We discussed the moral of the story after and stuff—What do you think?”

“For the moral of the story?”

“Hhm.”

“Um, I think—You can’t, like, trust something by just seeing it. You can’t run off just an appearance because it can be deceiving. Don’t draw conclusions from just a smudge when you could wait a little longer and get an entire picture.”

“That’s,” Dan let the words soak under his skin. “Wow.”

Skye smiled. “Do you think it’s good?”

“Yeah,” Dan let a little laugh flutter out of his mouth. “I think it’s real good. Real smart. You’re on the same wavelength as me—that’s hard to do. My thoughts are eccentric.”

“ _Eccentric_ ,” Skye let the word roll off his tongue.

Dan was silent for a moment, then he let his fingers trail along the lining of Skye’s blankets. “Do these keep you warm? It’s chilly in here.”

“They usually do a good job—Here,” Skye draped a blanket over Dan’s legs carefully, tucking it in around him.

“Thanks,” he shuffled closer to the wall. “It’s all stone though in here. Surely blankets can only do little.”

“They’re more for comfort,” Skye muttered, and the light cast a shadow above his head. “I don’t tend to get cold.”

Dan instinctively pressed a palm against the side of Skye’s face, and he felt a chill force itself so far into his bones that he flinched away.

“You’re freezing,” he stated, voice a bit shocked. His fingers still tingled and he shook at them. “Literally freezing. You’re not sick, are you? That’s some fever you’ve got if you are.”

“No, I’m okay,” Skye weakly insisted. His eyes were focused elsewhere, somewhere behind Dan’s face. He wasn’t looking at anything exactly, he was just distant.

“Do you want me to put the light on?” Dan offered.

“No,” The word was so certain and defiant in Skye’s voice. “I mean—No. It’s okay. I’m good. I like it better with the lights off.”

“I can’t see how you don’t get scared.”

“Of the dark?”

“No, of being in an asylum in the dark.”

“It isn’t that bad. It just feels like home now.”

Dan stared at Skye, heart making soft whimpers as it melted and sloshed against his chest. “You could find a better home. I could find you one.”

Skye’s smile was subsided as his teeth came down over his bottom lip. “Don’t think I can see myself having much else. Kinda impossible.”

“It isn’t,” Dan shook his head. They were sat with their backs against the wall and their shoulders touching and rumpled blankets draped over their knees and Dan was wondering how on earth they’d got there. “Why is it impossible? You had a home once. A proper one.”

“What’s a proper home?”

Dan shrugged. “Suppose it’s subjective. But most people wouldn’t consider this place a home.”

“They would if they had nowhere else,” There was a touch of pain in Skye’s tone, and the gaps in the sentence were marked with fractures of you don’t know what I’ve been through.

“Yeah . . . Sorry, yeah, you’re right,” Dan shuffled a bit closer to the boy, and he felt an intense emission of the same biting chill. He tightened the blankets around himself and tried to ignore it. He was just cold.

“You don’t have to be sorry, Dan. You’re lovely and lovely people don’t have to be sorry.”

“Lovely people are often also not lovely,” Dan rested his head against the wall, eyes on Skye. “They apologise when they are for the times that they’re not . . . I told you I make no sense sometimes.”

“No, you do. You always do. I can understand what you mean.”

“Well, I’m glad somebody does.”

“I’m glad, too. I’m glad I understand you because we wouldn’t be able to do this if I didn’t.”

“Do, what?”

“Talk.”

“Oh,” Dan settled. “Yeah. It’s nice.”

And there was a fragile silence that nestled into the air then, soaking everything up. It all felt good and it all felt okay and Dan’s left arm was just near frosted from sitting so close to the wintry boy, but he didn’t mind. Because, for once in a good few days, he felt like his mind was at peace. It had found some sort-of reside and clung onto it like the sun to black fabric and it wasn’t going to let go of it for anything. It was still, forcing slow fingers of serenity down the bumps in his spine.

He glanced and found Skye smiling at him, eyes equally as soft and suggesting the same sudden excess of ease in his being. 

“What?” he breathed.

“Your hair’s really curly, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” Dan gave a smile that was strung with sleep. “It does that when I wash it. Goes all mad. I had a shower before I came, so.” 

“It’s awesome,” Skye lifted his hand and let his fingers hover over Dan’s hair. He touched it just lightly, then retracted his arm back to himself like he was embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” Dan said softly. “You can touch the curls. I don’t mind. I know, they’re hard to resist.”

Skye giggled, and played with the ends of his too-big hoodie. “Just a little, Dan.”

Dan’s chest inflated with something again. He didn’t know what it was about Skye; he didn’t know why suddenly nothing else seemed to matter but that boy, but nothing _did_. He was beautiful. Actually _beautiful_. And Dan wasn’t gonna throw that word around like it was nothing because this was Skye, for God’s sake. This was some guy he’d stumbled upon in an asylum; this was a _guy._

God.

“You haven’t seen the kids around lately, have you?” Dan asked, just to venture away from the strange topic soaking up his mind.

“No,” Skye shook his head. “I told you, they don’t tend to come out at night.”

“Are they here a lot though?”

“More than you.”

“We should try and scare them off,” Dan suggested.

“I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

“I could bring my friends to help. There’s obviously PJ but I have two others, too. Chris and Cat. And we could all work together to defeat them and—”

Skye looked defeated. “It’ll be pointless, Dan.”

“No, it won’t. Of course it won’t. We could come up with some amazing plan so they can’t slip away,” he paused. “Come on, Skye. I’d feel better about leaving you here by yourself if I knew you were remotely safer.”

“They wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”

“You can’t be sure. Please, let’s do it.”

Skye sighed. “What would be your plan? How could you defeat them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe . . . Maybe we could kill them.”

“ _Kill_ them?”

Dan rubbed his face. “Yeah, okay, that’s a bit far. Whatever. We’ll think of something and we’ll get rid of them, there’s just a few things I have to take care of before we get onto that. But we will. We’ll help you. Promise.”

“Okay,” Skye smiled softly. “Promise.”

::

“Surely anonymous couldn’t delete Dan’s messages though.”

The four stood at PJ’s locker that next day, Chris fiddling around on Dan’s phone with the forums open. “I wouldn’t have thought so. As far as I know, a user doesn’t have the power to tamper with someone else’s posts, unless . . . ”

Cat narrowed her eyes. “Unless?”

“Unless they were hacked.”

“Who was hacked?”

“The system. Whoever’s behind this could’ve hacked the system to retrieve various codes that allow them access to all posts across the board. But I can’t see that happening on these forums. Who would want to hack the nerds on this site?”

“True,” PJ sighed. “So you have no idea?”

“Not really, no. I mean, even the account is private. I can’t do much,” Chris looked apologetic. “Anything else happen but the two messages?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dan took his phone back and flitted through his recents. He brought up the message from yellowwall and handed it over to Chris. “Probably means nothing, but it might link with anonymous. It was the only person who replied.”

“Littlerock, East South Tower Elm Road,” Cat read aloud. “Is that the address of the asylum?”

“It’s just spam,” PJ rolled his eyes. “Why are you wasting your time on it? We gotta figure out who anonymous is—we could take it to the technicians here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chris scoffed. “Because that would work, PJ. As if they’d do this for us; they’d probably call our parents and our entire investigation would be shut down. Littlerock is top secret around here, you know it is.”

“But we don’t have to show them the messages, we can just ask them to trace the whereabouts of anonymous’ account and—”

“Lester,” Cat murmured, under the noise of the two boys. Dan watched her with confusion as she stared at the address on the screen.

“What?” he asked.

“Lester,” she repeated louder, and snatched the phone. “Guys, shut up a second.”

They continued.

“Guys!” Dan snapped.

“Jesus, what?” Chris turned with a loud exhale.

“What did you say was the last name of the family who owned Littlerock?” Cat asked Dan.

“Lester. William and Grant Lester.”

She smiled to herself and held up the phone. “Look at the first letter of every word.”

Littlerock, East South Tower Elm Road.

**LESTER**

“Oh, fuck,” Chris laughed. “How the hell did you notice that?”

Cat shrugged. “You think it’s intentional?”

“It has to be,” Dan answered. “That isn’t the actual address. Well, I mean, it is. But addresses aren’t displayed like that. It’s all been intentionally jumbled up. Surely if the person just wanted to tell us the address, they’d say: Littlerock, Tower Elm Road, South East of Oakwell.”

“That’s true,” Cat clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “Wow, this is weird. We need to contact this guy, he might know something.”

“Know, what?” PJ threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “Nothing more than us. He just said the last name of the guys who owned it. That’s common information. I bet he doesn’t know shit.”

“Let me message him,” Dan took his phone and brought up yellowall’s profile. He clicked on the chat with me! button and started typing.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“One second,” Dan dismissed, focusing on the words he typed out. Once he’d finished, he showed them.

_what do you know about Littlerock?_

“Just send it,” Chris shrugged. “If he doesn’t reply, we’ll know he was fucking around.”

“Alright,” Dan pressed send, then tapped his fingers on the side of his phone. “I think I might go see my grandfather after school today and just try asking him. He’s great, he is, and I’m sure he’ll know something. He would’ve been much older when all this happened, too, so he might have things to say.”

“Unless he just isn’t gonna say them, like everyone else,” PJ looked around the busy corridors. “Nobody talking about that place is starting to piss me off.”

“There’s a reason why,” Cat shrugged her shoulders. “We just gotta find out what it is.”

“We just gotta find out a lot of things,” PJ looked at Dan. “Can I come with you?”

“To my grandfather’s?”

“Yeah. I got nothing better to do.”

“Sure. We’ll go right after school.”

::

Dan’s grandfather, Peter Howell, had a small house on the other side of Oakwell. He lived alone after his wife died a good few years before Dan was born. He’d never got to meet his grandmother, but he’d heard wonderful stories about her and he thought maybe that made up for it.

“Dan!” Dan was pulled into a crushing hug when he knocked on the door with PJ that afternoon to his grandfather’s surprised face. “I didn’t know you were coming, your father never said.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Dan admitted. “Can I come in?”

“You can indeed. Who’s this?”

“Oh, PJ,” Dan shrugged. “My best mate.”

“Nice to meet you, PJ,” Dan’s grandfather shook his hand with a smile.

“Hey there, Dan’s grandfather.”

The old man laughed. “Please, call me Peter.”

“Alright.”

The boys followed through into the living-room, where they sat down before the TV and the small fire. Dan’s grandfather left to the kitchen to make them each a hot chocolate and Dan and PJ sat stroking the small cat curled up on the sofa.

“He’s called Tibbles,” Dan said. “He’s really old now, but he’s still awesome.”

PJ ran his hand carefully down the cat’s scraggy back. “I’m allergic to cats.”

“What?”

“Kidding,” he laughed. “My mom is, though.”

“Don’t go hugging your mom when you get home then.”

“As if,” PJ looked around the small room, admiring it’s simple beauty. “What are you gonna ask him, then?”

“Who?”

“Your grandfather. We came here so you could ask him questions, as much as like drinking hot chocolate and stroking small cats.”

Dan sighed and gave a shrug. “I’ll just see if he knows anything. I’m sure he does.”

His grandfather entered then, as if on a missed cue, holding two steaming mugs. He put them down on the coffee table and then proceeded to take a seat in the corner of the room with a tired huff.

“So,” he started. “Why’re you here then, lad?”

Dan shifted on the sofa. “I wanted to see if you knew some stuff.”

“Some stuff? On what?”

“Littlerock.”

Dan watched his grandfather, expecting some shift in demeanour, but there was nothing. His expression didn’t at all crumble. He just smiled.

“I see,” he said. “This is the age to be interested in everything, eh?”

“Yeah. So do you know anything?”

“About Littlerock?” he paused. “I know a bit. I don’t often spend my time fussing around places like that. It looks like it came straight out of a horror movie.”

“It’d be a great place to film one,” PJ chirped, and he and the old man shared a smile.

“What do you want to know about it?”

Dan thought for a moment. “Just whatever you know.”

“Well,” His grandfather folded his hands in his lap. “I can tell you when it opened and when it closed.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“I don’t think so. Probably just some generic reason.”

“What about that four year period of nothing?” PJ questioned. “74 to 78. Where they kept everything on the low and nobody asked anything.”

“Oh, people asked things,” The man’s smile was small, thin. “They just weren’t given answers.”

“Did you think it was weird?”

“Of course. But I didn’t waste my breath on it. I was working a lot at the time. Business was tight and, well, I just didn’t have the time to worry about things like that.”

“But you must have wondered,” Dan pushed. “You must have wondered what was happening there.”

“Oh, definitely. Everyone did. But it wasn’t something I was obsessed with. Some people were.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “They protested and demanded answers. They were just terrified of what was going on.”

PJ laughed. “Bit dramatic.”

“Not exactly. Littlerock was always very open; there was a time when they allowed the public into certain parts of it. But then they became very secretive and didn’t open the doors at all. Nobody went in and nobody came out.”

“Nobody came out?” Dan latched onto the new information. “Not the people who worked there?”

“Oh—Did you not know that?”

He shook his head.

“Well, there you go then. I taught you something,” His grandfather grinned. “No, nobody came out. The people who worked there were under tight orders too, it seemed. Littlerock from 74 to 78 was a bit of a scandal.”

“I can imagine,” PJ said, sipping his hot chocolate. “Is that all you know?”

“Basically. I’m sorry I can’t be of much help to you boys.”

“Do you know why nobody talks about it? Whenever we ask now, everybody just—they say that we can’t ask about it,” Dan continued to pick at the topic.

“They’re unsettled by it,” Was all he replied with. “They don’t like it. It’s not a very nice place.”

_Vague._

“Oh,” Dan said. “Okay.”

They watched TV for a while in comfortable conversation. Dan just listened as his grandfather and PJ talked about various things. Old movies and video-games. All that crap. When he’d finished his drink, he left to go the bathroom before they went home.

Dan was getting sick of thinking. He didn’t know what it was about this entire thing that had completely trapped his mind and heart alike but he couldn’t rid himself from it. He needed answers. He needed something. Something more. Something to lead him into the right direction because he wasn’t sure if he was going the correct way; he wasn’t sure if he was even moving.

He went to the bathroom and headed back down the stairs. He and PJ left then, after he hugged his grandfather, apologised for not seeing him in a while, and promised to come back soon. Dan often felt guilty for not coming to visit frequently. It was just—he was getting older and he wasn’t going to live forever. He had to make the most of the time he had.

Dan and PJ rode home in a sort-of sticky silence. It was one that suggested failure and it remained threaded into the air until Dan felt a buzz on his left thigh, where is phone was, and they stopped riding.

It was _yellowwall._

“What did he say?” PJ burst in excitement.

 **yellowwall:** Project 168912

“What the hell does that mean?” PJ remarked. “Dude, I’m starting to think this guy’s got a thing for codes.”

“Wait,” Dan paused to type out a reply.

 **danisnotonfire** : was that some experiment they did there??

“Ah,” PJ clicked his fingers. “Experiments. Nice. I never thought of that.”

 **yellowwall** : 168912

Dan took a shaky breath and read the numbers aloud, repeating them three times. “Why would somebody name an experiment that?”

“Well, he never answered the damn question. We don’t even know if it was an experiment.”

“It was,” Dan insisted. “It must have been.”

His phone vibrated again.

 **yellowwall** : 16.8.9.12

 **danisnotonfire** : give me more. just a bit. help me figure this out.

PJ looked at him, then back at the screen. And they waited.

 **yellowwall** : Alphabet

“Alphabet?” PJ repeated. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said. “Think.”

“Huh?”

“Just think, PJ,” he pressed his hand to his head. “ _Think_.”

“Okay,” PJ let the word drag and it executed a long minute of silence. They were stood on the side of the road, holding up their bikes and staring down at a phone screen and they probably looked insane. Dan knew his parents would be wondering where he was and he was surprised he hadn’t got a call yet, but this was too important to get sidetrack. It was getting onto around five o’clock and—

Five o’clock.

Five.

The alphabet.

“PJ,” he blurted. “The alphabet. The numbers of the alphabet.”

PJ looked at him. “I think you’ve got a bit confused there, Dan. It’s _letters_ of the alphabet.”

“No, you idiot. What’s the sixteenth letter of the alphabet?”

“Um,” PJ pressed his lips together in thought. “P.”

Dan shrugged his bag off his back and retrieved his Maths book and a pen. He turned to the back page and scrawled down the letter as a block capital. “Okay. And the eighth?”

“H.”

Dan put the letter beside the P.

“Ninth.”

“I.”

“And the twelfth.”

“L,” PJ looked so utterly confused as Dan wrote the final letter down. He sighed. “Dan, what are you doing?”

“Look,” Dan shoved the book under his nose. “The numbers correspond to the placement of the letters in the alphabet. 16, 8, 9 and 12. P-H-I-L.”

“Phil,” PJ recited.

Dan nodded slowly. “Phil.”

 **danisnotonfire** : phil?

 **yellowwall** : Littlerock, East South Tower Elm Road

PJ groaned and smacked his hands off his bike in irritation. “That shit again?”

“Shut up. Whoever’s behind this is trying to help, PJ,” Dan paused. “We figured out it meant Lester.”

 **danisnotonfire** : lester

 **yellowwall** : 168912 - Littlerock, East South Tower Elm Road

“Phil Lester,” Dan decoded. “Project Phil Lester. That’s a name. Search it, PJ.”

“On it,” PJ took his phone out of his pocket and started tapping at his phone.

 **danisnotonfire** : phil lester

“Anything?” he turned back to PJ.

“Here. Read it out loud,” PJ handed Dan his phone, open on a news article from 1974.

“ _Philip Lester (born January 30th, 1964) disappeared during June of 1974 when he was ten-years-old from the town of Oakwell, England. He has never been found. He disappeared June 21st, after supposedly leaving for school one morning but failing to show there. Suspicions rose when he didn’t return home that evening and his parents contacted the police_ ,” Dan paused to skim down to another paragraph. “ _The investigation searching for Lester ended abruptly not even a month after his disappearance, on July 6th. Oakwell Police Department held back on information, giving only a brief statement in which they assured the right decision had been made, and that there was not enough evidence to proceed. The investigation has never been continued_.”

“Not enough evidence?” PJ echoed. “I call bullshit.”

“Same,” Dan agreed with a nod. “A ten-year-old boy disappears and they give up after a month of searching?”

“Corporate secrets, I like it—”

PJ stopped himself as Dan received another message.

 **yellowwall** : June 21st, 1974

 **danisnotonfire** : the day he disappeared. do u know where he is? is he alive?

 **yellowwall** : No.

“He’s not alive?” PJ looked confused. “I don’t know how this links with Littlerock, or how this person knows he’s dead. He could just be fucking with us.”

“No, he gave us this information for a reason. The Lesters obviously lived in Oakwell and had a massive link with Littlerock, we have to find them.”

“Dan, we don’t know if they still do. And we’d have no way of finding them.”

“Let’s go back and ask my grandfather,” Dan shifted the frame of his bike.

“No,” PJ grabbed the bars. “He won’t know anything, he’s not some stalker. Chris might be able to find out some stuff, I’ll ring him.”

“Now?”

“Yeah,” PJ held his phone to his ear and tapped his foot against the floor.

_Phil Lester._

Dan had never heard the name, but it struck a strange familiarity inside of him.

“Not answering, the ass,” PJ hung up. “Let’s just go home and I can keep trying him.”

“Wait, I’ll try Cat,” Dan flicked onto his contacts and scrolled down to Cat’s name. He clicked on the little phone and waited.

“Dan?” she breathed down the line. Dan felt a wave of relief.

“Cat, hey. Can you check some names out for me?”

“Oh, sure. Let me just get my laptop,” There was a rustling that fluttered through the phone and Dan waited patiently. When she returned, he told her the name, and she said that she was onto it.

“Phil Lester,” she repeated. “Some kid who disappeared from here in 1974.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Any chance you can find out whereabouts his family live in this town?”

“I don’t know if I can find that kind-of information online, Dan.”

“Alright, then look somewhere else.”

“I’ll check out a directory,” Cat informed. She clicked away audibly down the phone and Dan left her in silence.

“Here, I got it. Lester. 22 Lape Road, WR4 6TP.”

“Lape Road?” Dan turned to PJ. “Peej, you know a Lape Road in town?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t either,” Cat said. “It says it’s in Oakwell though. I can use my phone for directions. Where you guys at?”

“Just coming back from my grandfather’s. _Yellowwall_ was messaging in code and told us the name. It has to have something to do with Oakwell.”

“I thought Grant Lester was dead?” Cat’s words filtered in as a question.

“He is. And so is Phil, apparently. But there’s obviously somebody who lives there with that surname.”

“True. Do you wanna go look tonight?”

“I should probably get home, my parents don’t know where I am,” Dan sighed. “And it might be too late to go knocking doors. We could go tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay. Shall we meet somewhere in the morning?”

“I guess just school. Aren’t we going after?”

“No,” Cat answered. “Let’s just skip.”

“Are you serious?” Dan laughed. “Cat skipping school. Who would’ve thought?”

“Shut up,” she groaned. “Do you want to?”

“Of course,” Dan glanced at PJ. “We’re skipping school tomorrow to go find the Lesters. You in?”

PJ’s eyes caught alight and he bounced in glee. “Hell, yeah!”


	7. VII

**vii.**

The next day, the group met with their bikes behind school. It was touching at nine when the bell rang through the building and Chris wiggled his eyebrows at Cat.

“Hear that, my love?” he teased. “Bells. You are now officially a rebel.”

“I’ll punch you in the face in a minute,” Cat glared at him. “You weren’t asked to come.”

“Neither were you.”

“I thought of the plan.”

“Do you think we should go grab Skye?” Dan jumped into the conversation, ignoring their petty arguments.

“He’s that kid in the asylum, right?” Chris asked.

“Yeah.”

PJ frowned. “Why would we?”

“Because he’s on his own,” Dan shrugged, voice growing smaller, thinning with embarrassment.

“Aw,” Chris made a soft sound. “That’s quite cute.”

“Didn’t realise you swung that way, Danny,” PJ teased with a smile, nudging their shoulders. “You think he’s nice?”

“Shut up, I wasn’t—I’m not—”

“Gay?”

Dan’s cheeks flushed. “I’m not.”

“You are for Skye.”

“Yes, PJ,” Dan’s voice flooded with sarcasm. “My sexuality is fluid depending on the person. I’m an open book.”

“That’s called bisexuality,” Chris told him.

“No, it’s _not_. That’s not what bisexuality is, you unenducated pleb. And it was a joke.”

“I wasn’t saying that’s what you are, it’s just what you described,” Chris silenced himself. “Wouldn’t matter if you were, anyway.”

“I’m not!”

“Just saying!” Chris held his hands up. “I was _just_ saying.”

PJ nudged Dan again. “You probably are, if you like Skye.”

“I like him but not like that. I’m not gonna kiss him or anything,” Dan fiddled with his jacket. “Just think he’s pretty.”

“That’s so adorable,” Chris laughed.

“No,” Dan shook his head.

“Yes,” PJ argued. “It is. Kiss him.”

“PJ!”

“What? Come on, Dan. I bet he likes you.”

“He doesn’t,” Dan’s skin was burning in a secluded embarrassment. “He _totally_ doesn’t.”

“But you like him?” Cat chirped, eyes small and voice indifferent.

“I don’t know,” Dan felt like such an idiot. He felt like a complete mess inside. “Maybe—Probably—A bit. I don’t know! Can we just go?”

“To get your boyfriend?” PJ was grinning.

“He’s not my boyfriend. Don’t start doing that shit, God.”

“He would be if you did something about your feelings,” Chris was smiling, also. “Is he actually hot?”

“Not hot,” Dan shook his head, feeling something against the wording. “Pretty. He has really blue eyes and a really soft voice and . . . he’s not hot. It’s hard to explain. He’s just—”

“Easy to look at?”

“Yeah,” Dan chewed his lip. “Yeah. It’s so lovely to look at him.”

“I feel like I’m at the centre of a terrible rom-com,” Cat commented.

“It’s not terrible,” PJ defended. “Dan’s in love.”

“I am _not_ in love.”

Chris grinned. “I object.”

“You aren’t allowed to object, they’re my feelings and I’m telling you I’m not in love,” Dan rolled his bike a few metres away.

“You sure about that?”

“Positive,” he said quietly. “I’ll let you know when I fall for him.”

Chris put a hand over his heart. “I beg you to stop. It hurts.”

“Shut your mouth,” Dan’s glare was pathetic.

“I can’t help it. It’s so cute to see you swooning over him.”

“Jesus,” Dan turned away. “I’m out.”

“Yeah, come on,” PJ climbed onto his bike. “Let’s go get Dan’s prince.”

“You better not do this when he’s here,” Dan started riding slowly at the front of the little group.

“Don’t worry, we won’t embarrass you in front of him. We’ll just admire the way you look at him.”

“The way I _look at him_?” Dan scoffed. “Please.”

“We’re only kidding,” PJ rode to Dan’s side and he went a bit more serious, voice gentler. “You like him though, yeah? For real?”

Dan nodded, cheeks softening in pink again. “But don’t tease me about it,” he breathed. “God.”

“Alright, fair enough,” PJ said, still treading lightly around the topic.

“And I’m not gay. Don’t call me it—not that it’s bad, of course it isn’t, I’m just not. I haven’t felt anything for a boy before.”

“Maybe Skye’s the first.”

“Maybe,” Dan whispered. “Or he could just be a one-off. I like girls, it’s just—he’s so pretty. Have you seen him, PJ?”

“I have indeed,” PJ laughed. “It is kinda cute, Dan.”

“What?”

“You talking about him. Your voice goes all strange and stuff.”

“This needs to stop now,” he sighed. “It’s so embarrassing, bloody hell.”

“It isn’t.”

“Are we going to get him?” Chris called from behind them.

“Yeah, from the asylum,” PJ called back. “And then we go find the Lesters.”

They did just that. The other three waited outside of the asylum’s gates (Dan managed to convince them to stay out, despite their protests) as Dan went in and looked for Skye. He called his name out into the ward, voice light and easy around the word, and moved at a fairly quick pace. They didn’t have all day to find the house; they had to do it before school finished, so they could get back home and act as if nothing happened.

Whilst Dan searched the ward for the boy, he encountered the first hurdle in his plan of action. The kids.

They slipped out of a cell after he had passed it and coughed from behind him. Dan jumped, shocked, and his eyes widened.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath. _No, no, no_. “Hey, again. What do you want?”

“Where are the files?”

Dan quickly turned to a frown. “We put them back.”

“You didn’t,” Bobby hissed. “You blood-boys are all lying little shits. Where the hell are they?”

“I told you, we put them back!” Dan insisted, voice raising. “Did you even look?”

Octavia laughed, cold. “Of course we looked.”

“Then you’d have found them. We left them exactly where they were.”

“Don’t lie!” Bobby roared and started walking towards Dan, who realised his situation very quickly. He began to back up, then his frequent steps turned into a spin and a jolt. He bolted down the corridor into the warden’s office, wondering if the kids knew about the secret room. They probably did.

“Shit, shit,” Dan looked around, frantic. Where the hell was he supposed to go? He knew they were getting closer, he hadn’t been running much faster than them and—

A chilled hand came and closed down over his mouth, an arm wrapping tight around his waist to pull him back. He felt a shiver slide down his spine as he was pretty much lifted into a cupboard by cold hands, and the doors shut on him, enclosing him into complete darkness. Instinctively, he reached to climb out, but the person stopped him.

“Dan,” It was Skye. “Dan, stop, it’s me. Stay quiet or they’ll hear.”

“Skye?” Dan tried to squint through the darkness.

“Yeah. Shh.”

“Sorry,” he barely whispered.

“It’s okay. Just don’t make a sound.”

Dan held his breath as he heard the office door creak open. There was a little patter against the concrete floor and he shuffled closer to Skye, into his perimeter decorated with complete frost. The boy, sensing some trace of fear, wrapped his arm around Dan’s so they were linked.

A chill ached through Dan’s being, but it wasn’t enough to force him away from Skye.

“Come on, blood-boy. I know you’re in here,” Bobby’s voice was dripping in something terrifying, something sharp and with a jagged edge.

Dan’s breathing was ragged, uneven. He was having difficulty keeping it under control and he tried to hold onto an exhale, failing miserably.

It was then that Skye’s hand came and slipped over his mouth—not to _kill him_ or anything, just to help him out and keep their position on the low. His cold fingers pressed lightly onto his cheeks and around the shape of his lips.

“Shh,” he hushed, gentle. “It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”

“Hey!” Bobby yelled again. “Bad move hiding from me in this place! I’ll find you!”

Dan closed his eyes, tight. Fuck.

“Is it the dark?” Skye’s voice was something so far below a whisper that he wasn’t even forming his words properly. There was a quiet rustle, and then a burst of light. Dan saw that Skye had a lighter, and he’d ignited it.

“You want this on?” he asked, and flicked it. “Look, it can go on or off. Light or dark. Whenever you want. Isn’t that cool?”

Dan lifted a hand to the object and took it from Skye’s hand carefully, their fingers brushing in a blur of hot and cold.

Dan held onto the lighter in his hands and leant further into the boy at his side, arm resting on his leg. His teeth came down over his lip to stop himself from shivering.

“Come on, blood-boy—Don’t be scared now!”

Dan let his eyes flutter shut again and he trembled in the small space.

“He’ll go away soon,” Skye promised. “All the worst of us get bored. You’ll be okay. Wouldn’t let you not be.”

Dan felt a pull in his chest, but he didn’t speak or act on it in fear of making too much noise. Instead he just flicked at the light, watching it click on and off, on and off, as a way to pass the time that just seemed to be crawling by.

“You lost him? Fucking idiot!” There was a clatter and then a slam of a door, and Dan’s eyes were as wide as his ears were open. Skye put a hand on his leg to keep him back.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “We need to be sure he’s gone.”

“He is,” Dan finally spoke.

“Okay—Let me go first,” Skye carefully inched the cupboard door open and it creaked softly through the air. He pushed his head out into the office, and Dan wanted to grab him and pull him back in. He wrapped a hand around his arm instead and said his name.

“It’s okay, it’s safe,” Skye dropped silently out of the cupboard, shoes barely making a sound as they hit the floor. He turned as Dan was following him out. “Careful, Dan. Are you—Are you okay?”

Dan nodded and brushed his shirt down. “I—I’m—”

His voice was weak and beaten and he felt so attacked. Like somebody had just punched him repeatedly in the stomach—and he couldn’t even help it when he pushed his face into his hands and leant back against the cupboard. He was just so overwhelmed with emotion.

“Dan,” Skye whispered, and he took a step closer. “Dan?”

“I’m so dramatic,” he choked. “Fuck. I’m sorry, you don’t—you don’t need this.”

“No, it’s okay,” Skye hooked a loose arm around Dan’s neck and rested it on his shoulders, as though saying _let me hug you_ without actually saying it. “It’s okay, really—Are you alright?”

“I’m just—He was gonna kill me, wasn’t he?” Dan’s voice crumbled in the middle, and a horrible sound soaked thick in the back of his throat. Skye inched closer at the painful noise and Dan moved to rest his face on the sharp bones between his shoulder and neck. He was so thin and frail and he shook with Dan as he struggled to drag himself through the emotion.

“I wouldn’t have let him hurt you,” Skye said, right in his ear. “You know that, right?”

“But he would’ve—If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have known where to go and he’d have probably cooked and eaten me for _lunch_ —” Dan lifted his arms to give the freezing boy a proper hug. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“It’s alright,” Skye smoothed a hand down over the small of his back. “I’m a pro at hiding.”

“And saving stuff. You’re a pro at saving stuff.”

“No, Dan. I wish I was.”

“You are though.”

“I’m not.”

“You just saved me.”

“Once,” Skye managed a laugh. “Only once. Doesn’t make me a pro.”

“You only have to do it once,” Dan pulled back and rubbed his nose, looking up at the boy. “For it to count, I mean. You’ve done it now and that means forever.”

“Well, okay,” Skye smiled.

“Yeah. Okay,” Dan carefully moved himself away, back into his own space. He shivered again at the change in temperature and said: “You’re still freezing, you know? Sure you haven’t got a fever?”

Skye just nodded.

“I think you might do.”

He shrugged. “Why are you here today, Dan? At this time?”

“Me and my friends have skipped school to dig for stuff. More secrets, you know,” he smiled, and it felt like a relief. “We wondered if you wanted to help, so I came and—and that happened.”

Skye was frowning. “Help?”

“Yeah. Tag along, or something. We’re going on a bit of an adventure.”

“Where?”

“Around the town, looking for a house. The Lester household,” The moment the words punctured the air, Skye’s eyes seemed to change. They became heavier, like they were weighted with something, and Dan very near asked him if he knew who they were just judging by the reaction he gave at the name. “Do you want to come help?”

“I—” Skye swallowed. “I should probably stay here.”

“Oh,” Dan licked his cracked lips. “Okay, then. Are you sure?”

“Yeah—Thanks, though. It was really nice of you to ask but I think I should stay and keep watch for them.”

“Alright,” Dan shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“Be careful getting out.”

“I will. You keep safe, too,” Dan gave him a warm smile. “See you soon, Skye.”

::

When Dan exited the asylum’s gates to his three friends, he no doubt looked more shaken up than he had done when he had entered.

“Well, you took your sweet-ass time,” Chris was leant against the gates, arms crossed. “Did you have a feelings session or something? Where’s Skye?”

Dan picked up his bike. “He’s not coming.”

“Rejection,” Chris put his fingers in the shape of a gun and fired.

“No,” Dan shook his head. “He just wanted to stay.”

“No mask, I see. Bad atmospheres, Dan,” PJ said, eyes concerned. “You okay?”

Dan blinked. “Um, yeah. Well—No, actually. I’m not. The kids were back.”

“You’re joking,” he almost gasped. “They’re in there right now? Hell, let’s burn the damn place down!”

“With Skye in it?” Dan fixed himself on his bike. “I don’t bloody think so.”

“So protective,” Chris clenched the fabric of his jacket over his chest. “Just beautiful!”

PJ rolled his eyes and flicked his attention back to Dan. “What did they do? Did they talk to you?”

“Yeah. They chased me.”

“ _Chased_ you?” Cat’s voice was worried, eyes peering up from her phone. “Why? What did you do?”

“They didn’t think we’d given them their damn files back,” Dan made a face. “I bet they didn’t even look—That Bobby is psychotic, I’m telling you.”

“He’s a ghost,” PJ said.

“Right,” Dan sighed. “I don’t know why I was so terrified he could hurt me.”

“Did he?” Cat asked another question.

“No. I hid with Skye, in a cupboard. It was bloody horrible.”

“Oh, you loved it,” Chris continued to tease.

“I didn’t actually. I could’ve cried when I got out, it just about scared the shit out of me.”

“So how come Skye didn’t come?” PJ frowned.

“For that reason. He wanted to keep watch or whatever. I suppose you’d want to if some psychos were lurking around your house.”

“House,” PJ shook his head and looked at the daunting building. “Bless him.”

“I know,” Dan tried not to think about the boy sitting alone in the dark. “You got the directions up?”

“I think so,” Cat answered. “22 Lape Road, WR4 6TP. Ready?”

The boys started off down the road and she followed, slipping in front of them to guide the way. She held her phone in one hand and manoeuvred her bike with the other.

“Hey,” Chris poked Dan’s side, riding right beside him. They dragged a little at the back. “She likes you.”

“What?”

“Cat. _Likes_ you.”

Dan frowned. “She doesn’t.”

“Does, too,” he argued. “She never shuts up about you. When we walk home from school, it’s always just _Dan this, Dan that_.”

Dan thought for a moment, eyes on the girl quite a bit in front of them. He’d been close friends with her since they were barely five and he’d never thought of her that way, not at all. The idea of them being more had never crossed his mind . . . It felt a bit strange, the first time it did. Maybe he was just naive in that sense; he wasn’t very experienced in the field of relationships. Yes, he’d been with a few girls, but he was fourteen. It wasn’t like it was ever serious.

“For how long?” he asked Chris.

“Has she liked you? A while. Almost a year.”

“A _year_?”

“Yeah. It’s probably longer than that, she just confessed to me about a year ago.”

“God, I didn’t—” Dan felt a pang of guilt. “I had no idea. Why hasn’t she spoken to me about it?”

“Because she doesn’t want to go through the whole process of admitting her feelings to her crush, probably.”

“Yeah, but—We’re friends. We have been for so long, she knows she can talk to me.”

“These things are difficult though,” Chris said. “Like you talking to Skye about how you feel.”

“Shit, I bet she feels so horrible. I’ve been rambling on about him all morning and she’s heard it all—Fuck,” Dan had the sudden urge to apologise, drowning in sympathy.

“Don’t worry about it, man. It’s Cat, she’s strong. She can handle it. She’s probably a tad relieved she’s aware of whether she has a chance or not.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Dan stared at him.

Chris shrugged.

“I need to talk to her—When the hell did this thing become a romance over a mystery?”

“It’s an awful romance,” Chris laughed. “Absolutely horrifically written. But, yeah. Just go talk to her, man. Remember it didn’t come from me.”

Dan ignored the closing part of his response as he rode around Chris and PJ and closed in on Cat, giving her a smile when she noticed him. She returned it.

“Hey,” he said. “How’re the directions going?”

“Alright, I think. It’s a little further down this road, then we gotta take a couple lefts,” she paused. “How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“Not shaken up after what happened in there?”

“I definitely was. But I feel a bit better now. It’s the light of day that’s helped—and seeing you guys.”

She just smiled and continued to ride. Dan felt some sort of tug in him, like he was doing something wrong, but he rolled with it and went with the words on his tongue.

“Chris told me about, uh—about the thing.”

Cat looked at him, puzzled. “What thing?”

“You know. The me and you thing. The us thing. The I’m-not-supposed-to-know-that-you-like-me thing.”

“Oh,” Her eyes widened and she breathed in deep. “Yeah. Well, there is no—no _that_ thing. No thing at all. It doesn’t matter—I did tell him not to tell you.”

“You can’t trust Chris, you know you can’t,” Dan dared a laugh. “You could’ve told me, though. I wouldn’t have, like, disowned you or anything. You must have known I wouldn’t do that.”

“Admitting you like somebody is a big thing, Dan.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But this is me. I’m not gonna flip shit at you. We’ve been friends for years.”

“Exactly. So it was even weirder for me when I realised that I liked you.”

“It’s probably just the age.”

“Maybe. But I can handle it, Dan. You don’t to fuss around me. I can deal with rejection.”

“It’s not rejection,” Dan cringed at the word. “Just . . . Just not right now. I don’t really want that right now.”

“You want it with Skye though, right?” There was a trace of bitterness in her voice.

Dan looked away from her, and they rode in silence for a while. He did, was the thing. Probably. But he wasn’t going to tell her that and stamp on her heart, breaking it into even smaller pieces. He didn’t want to hurt her, he wanted to go the opposite way, so—

“We could go out sometime,” he suggested quietly, and she looked at him. “See a movie, maybe. There’s probably some horror on, and we both love them. That’d be real fun to scare the shit out of ourselves.”

She gave a small smile and a shake of her head. “I don’t want you to give me false hope, Dan. Don’t lead me on just because you feel sorry for me. They’re just feelings, I can handle them. They’ll go away.”

“No,” Dan insisted, and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. “Come with me. Tomorrow?”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. I can pay, too,” he laughed, joking. “Be a proper gentleman and stuff.”

She grinned. “You could never be anything of the sort.”

“Don’t piss all over my parade,” he paused to grin. “Welcome To The Piss Parade.”

Cat rolled her eyes—rather subtly grinning also at his terrible pun—and looked at her phone. They turned left at the end of the road.

“You know,” she muttered. “If you like Skye, that’s okay. It’s really nice that you do. I kinda wanted to meet him and see if he was as cute as you were making him out to be.”

Dan chewed his lip. “I’m sorry for going on about him like that.”

“Don’t be,” she looked sincere. “Honestly. If you like him, you like him. Let’s just go as friends tomorrow.”

“Well, okay,” Dan agreed. “As long as you’re alright with that. We don’t have to go as anything really.”

“No, just friends. It’ll be easier for me to deal with it then, I think. I can be myself around you as you can me,” she stretched her hand out. “Friends. Deal?”

Dan shook it. “Deal.”

“Thanks for coming to talk to me about it, Dan,” Cat smiled at him. “It’s better knowing that you know. I don’t have to freak out if I stare at you for too long now.”

He smiled back. “I didn’t even notice you were doing that. I guess I’m more oblivious than I ever thought.”

“Not really. There’s a lot going on right now.”

“Yeah—How far now?”

“Just another left here and then it should be at the end of the road, it says. I don’t think I’ve ever come down here.”

Dan looked around the dull road. The houses were small and semidetached and the brickwork was a horrible, grungy colour. The light of day seemed to fade, hiding away from something behind the buildings. The sound from the bikes was background noise; a repetitive run that seemed to have no end. Everything was foggy and lethargic and the air dragged with a concoction of drowse and obscurity. It all felt a bit wrong.

“I don’t know if like this,” PJ commented, over the soft breeze. “What if it’s not safe?”

“We have to do it,” Dan saw that Cat was slowing and he climbed off his bike, pulling it at his side and walking to match her pace.

“But what if it’s not _safe_ , Dan? We don’t have to do this at all, we’re choosing to.”

“ _Choosing_ ,” Dan mocked the word. “I wish this was a matter of choice.”

“Except you know it is,” PJ argued. “There’s nothing forcing us here.”

“Mystery,” Chris answered. “Mystery, PJ. It’s the mystery that’s drawing us in.”

Dan clicked his fingers at Chris to signify his agreement as they walked down the street. Cat stopped them not too far down, just outside of a quaint house all drawn up around the word _overgrown_. The front lawn was cluttered and the wall that should’ve probably stood as some sort-of barricade was crumbling as a depiction of time. It didn’t stand out as anything idiosyncratic, but it held something rather distinct with tight fingers. 

“Is this it?” Dan felt like he didn’t even need to ask the question.

“Seems so,” Cat said. They attempted to lean the four bikes against the wall, but upon realisation that it wasn’t stable enough, just laid them down on the pavement and hoped they wouldn’t get stolen. The thought would never have stuttered across Dan’s mind, had they have been anywhere else in town.

As they trekked down the path, Cat let her hand brush over the sharp grass that touched at her knees. She made some comment about the length of it, one that Dan didn’t think was important enough to recall, as they reached the front door.

They stood there, still, for about ten seconds.

Chris thumped PJ’s shoulder and urged, “Knock, then.”

“Why should I knock?” PJ snapped back. “Dan, go on.”

“ _Me_?” Dan put a hand to his chest.

“You’re the ring leader of this _magnificent_ scheme—”

“Shift,” Cat demanded, sliding a hand forward and tapping her knuckles against the wood. She glared at the three of them, and Dan pressed his lips into a thin line and looked down at his feet.

A minute passed. Two and then three.

She knocked again, this time with a bit more force, so it was more of a pound.

“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” PJ peered around at the setting. “This place is a shithole.”

“It doesn’t mean there’s nobody living here, maybe the family’s just old or—”

The door cracked, hinges rifting open, and snapped slightly ajar to a face of a man; a man whose suspected age plummeted under the cast of his unkept facial hair and the smudges of purple under his eyes. He looked the very picture of exhausted, straddling somewhere between tired and futile. Dan’s first thought was that if he were to split him open to see what was inside, he probably wouldn’t find much. Maybe a string of cobwebs and a label of vacancy.

“Hello,” The man’s voice was dry and guttural. He rested a pale hand on the side of the door. “Can I help you?”

“Um,” Dan cleared his throat. “Yeah, uh—Is this—Is this the Lester household?”

The man’s countenance faltered. “What of it?”

“So it is?” PJ interjected.

He nodded. “Why? What do you kids want? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“No—” Dan paused to sigh. “Well, yeah, but—”

“But we’re not, so don’t be an asshole about it, okay?” PJ gave a smile riddled with falsity and Dan glared at him. “Can we come in?”

“I don’t think so,” The man denied access. No surprise.

“Please,” Cat begged. “It’s important. Really important. We have some questions that need answers and this is, like, the only chance we got left.”

“Questions about what?”

“Littlerock,” Dan came outright with it.

“You have questions about Littlerock?” The man repeated slowly, like he wanted to be sure. A cloud of recognition cast over his head.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “We need your help, sir.”

The man breathed in deeply through his nose and opened the door back completely, to reveal a thin hallway. “Well,” he stepped to the side. “I think you better come in, then.”


	8. VIII

**viii.**

The house wasn’t really much. It was the expected. It wasn’t dirty, not at all, but it was plain. The walls were splattered in an empty cream and the floors were a dull beige. The pattern seemingly ran throughout the house.

Dan, PJ, Chris and Cat sat at a small table in the centre of a little kitchen as the man—Martyn, he’d introduced himself as—stood beside a brewing kettle.

“What’re your names?” he asked them, and they went through the group, starting with Dan and ending with Cat.

“I’ll have to try and remember that,” he said, when they were done. “My memory’s never been the best.”

Dan fiddled with his hands on the table. “Were you related at all to the Lesters?”

Martyn slowed. “Why past tense?”

“Sorry?”

“You said were. Why not are? Why past tense? Relation isn’t a temporary thing.”

“I know, I just—” Dan struggled to phrase the words. “Grant and William Lester. They’re both dead. And they owned Littlerock.”

Martyn nodded, impressed. “Some knowledge you have there, kid.”

Dan shrugged, and let a beat of silence pass. “So were you? Are you?”

“Phil Lester, too,” Cat added, into the stillness. “He’s dead, too, isn’t he? That kid that went missing.”

Martyn stared at her and folded his arms, leaning back against the counter. “What makes you so sure, Cat?”

She shrugged. “We’ve been in contact with an inside source.”

“Inside source?” he smiled. “Now who might that be, I wonder?”

Dan’s mind buzzed.

“A guy on some forums,” Chris answered quickly. “Well, it could be a girl. But we assume it’s a guy.”

“Do you know him?” Dan pressed.

“This forum guy?” Martyn returned. “Don’t think I do.”

“So what happened then? How are you connected?” PJ demanded. “Because we know it’s something. You’re living in the household of a family with quite a bit of a name and you’re not exactly the primmest of men, are you?”

“Prim,” Martyn laughed. “Funny word, that. You guys are interesting—Strange vocabularies. Admirable curiosities.”

The four shared a look that was hard for even them to distinguish.

“Yeah, okay,” Chris replied. “What do you know about Littlerock?”

“Mental asylum. Horrible stories. Probably a whole load of horse-shit.”

“Did your father own it? Was Grant your father?”

Martyn ignored the words to take the correct amount of mugs—one-by-one—out of the cupboard. He lifted the kettle and poured the boiling water into them.

“Was he?” Cat pushed. “Was Phil related to you, too?”

Martyn held his silence close to his chest, stirring a silver spoon through the hot liquids in the mugs.

“Hey,” The word was so hard and sharply crafted in Dan’s voice when he spoke that every trace of attention in the room snapped to him. “I’m starting to lose my fucking mind trying to figure out what the hell happened with that place and your family and this town and why everyone acts as if it spawned the damn devil. If you know something, sir, you better start talking or I swear to God, I’m out of here and I’m not ever coming back.”

Martyn let a small chuckle find its way out his lips. “What makes you think you being here benefits me?”

“Oh, believe me,” Dan said through clenched teeth. “I know it does.”

There was a shift in Martyn’s demeanour, and he dug a hand into his pocket. When he pulled it out, he kept a clenched fist and walked across to the table. Then, he dropped a little photograph onto the surface and moved away again.

Dan scrambled to grab it, opening it under the four intense gazes. He smoothed his finger along the deep indents so the image was illegible.

It was a boy.

Coloured by the cold tints of a vintage filter, familiarity pooled around his features. Black hair. Scraggy frame. He was holding up a golden trophy that shimmered under the light of day. In the corner was a small _May 2nd, 1972. Victory!_

Dan wanted to be sick. He knew who this was. He didn’t know if he was supposed to, but—

He looked up at his friends, and whilst Chris and Cat were fixed in expressions of suspicion, PJ looked just as sickened as Dan felt in that moment.

“Know who that is?” Martyn spoke, smooth.

Dan didn’t think he was actually seeing what he was seeing. Yes, PJ should’ve been a confirmation, but he just wasn’t. Reality paralleled with no way is this happening , a rephrase of fantasy, except this wasn’t fantasy. No matter how surreal it felt. No matter how wrong, when Dan opened his mouth and pulled on the oxygen, it came, and he inhaled. He was alive. And this was happening. And none of it was a dream, despite the injection of drowse into his blood. His head was cloudy, patterned with an inability to form coherent thoughts and—

And, fuck.

“No,” Chris and Cat harmonised the word.

“It’s—” _Skye_. “Phil Lester, that is.”

And Dan just wanted to get the fuck out of there. PJ’s chair scraped against the floor when he shifted in his seat, face struck with a shock that was hard to disregard. Dan felt his fingers tremble and he tightened them around the sides of the chair.

“This is him?” Chris looked harder at the photograph.

“He was a good-looking lad,” Cat commented. Dan’s heart pounded into his ribcage, sounding deep in his ears. _I kinda wanted to meet him and see if he was as cute as you were making him out to be._

“I think we should get going,” Dan’s voice was a mess, and he didn’t know how he managed to string the words up in the correct order.

“What?” Cat blurted, and her surprise dwindled to concern. “Are you alright? You look like you’re about to—”

“I don’t feel good,” Dan swallowed back the horrible taste in the back of his throat and tried not to look at the photograph. It can’t be him. It cannot be him.

“Something wrong?” Martyn’s voice sounded more sincere around the sentence than it had done yet. “Was it the photograph? Have you—What do you know?”

It struck Dan then that Martyn may not know all that he was broadcasting he did.

“No,” Was all Dan said, and he stood from his chair to drag himself across the room. He gripped onto the doorframe to stable himself when he reached it, and weakly demanded, “Come on. Get up.”

“Dan,” Chris said. “What the hell are you doing, man? Sit down. I thought—”

“Just get up, Chris!” he yelled.

“Dan!” Cat hit him at the same level. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, dammit, I just don’t feel good and I need to—” Dan twisted his hands through his hair and the breath caught in the back of his throat. “I need to get the hell out of here, my God—”

And he forced himself down the compact hallway, hands falling all over the walls. He cracked open the front door and stumbled out right into a gush of cold air that tasted and smelt and felt like Skye.

Skye.

_Phil?_

“Jesus,” Dan spluttered the word out shakily as his stride increased to a run on the path. His feet scrambled beneath him with some disconnect and he climbed over the wall, reaching down to grab his bike in one swift motion. He pulled the bars up and rushed to pull it with him down the road.

“Dan!” PJ’s voice situated in Dan’s ears, and he turned momentarily to look at him coming from behind.

“Go away, PJ,” he spat.

“Dude, you need to calm down—”

“Calm down? Calm down?” Dan’s laugh burned his throat. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? That was him. That was Skye—Phil. Skye is Phil.”

“It could’ve been a forge. There’s got to be a rational explanation to it all, Dan—Don’t run off like this, come on,” PJ tried to reach for his bike.

Dan moved away. “I’m going to see him. I need him to tell me what the hell is happening here.”

“Dan, it’s probably nothing.”

“Nothing? That was him! In 1972!”

“Maybe it wasn’t—”

“PJ,” Dan clenched his teeth. “It was him. I’ve got a crush on the guy, don’t you think I can tell him from a picture?”

“Alright, alright,” PJ huffed. “How do you explain this, then?”

“You were the one starting theories about ghosts.”

“You think I’m right? For real this time?” Hope laced in the boy’s voice.

“I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything.”

“You do,” PJ grabbed his shoulders. “Think. What’s weird about him? Is there anything?”

Dan was breathing so heavy and his throat felt so tight, but he forced through the ache at the sides of his head and deep in his being to dig up an answer. “Cold,” he conjured. “He’s cold.”

“Like—Like _Bobby cold_?”

“I’ve never felt _Bobby cold_.”

“It’s freezing. But not a freezing that’s like going out first thing of a winter morning. It’s like you’ve slept outside through the night. It gets so deep inside you that it actually aches and—”

“Yeah,” Dan wanted to cry. “He’s that kind-of cold, Skye is. He’s _Bobby cold_.”

“Dan, do you really think . . . ?”

“I need to go back and find him,” Dan turned back on his bike.

“No, you can’t. Wait until tonight or something, when you know the kids won’t be there. Or even tomorrow.”

“I can’t tomorrow,” Dan rubbed his face. “I’m taking Cat on a date.”

“You’re what now?”

“Not a date. We’re just going to see some movie. As friends. That’s what she said herself—” Dan caught PJ’s bewildered expression. “She likes me.”

“Like _likes_ you? As a boyfriend?”

Dan nodded.

“Well, don’t lead her on!” PJ remarked, exasperated. “Bloody hell, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

“What?”

“Dan, you like Skye—Phil. Whatever the hell his name is, whoever the hell he is, you like him,” PJ sighed. “You do.”

“I thought I did, but now he’s obviously just been lying to me the entire time,” Dan angrily flicked the bell on the front of his bike. “And it’s just some stupid crush that doesn’t even matter. Maybe I should just like Cat.”

“You can’t just like somebody because you want to, that’s not how it works.”

“How what works? Romance? Besides, I have bigger issues going on in my life than who I’m going to kiss and take out on soppy little dates,” Dan snapped. “So just stop talking about it. Stop comparing the two.”

“But—”

“No, PJ. There’s no comparison. Cat’s been my friend since I started school and . . . and I don’t even know what this guy’s name is,” Dan felt a pain deep in his chest. “He’s dead. He’s supposed to be dead and yet—yet I hid in a cupboard with him today and he helped me to get away from danger and I feel so much for him. I feel so much for him, PJ.”

“Just calm down,” PJ wrapped a gentle, comforting hand around Dan’s arm. “Please. We’re gonna sort this, mate, okay? We’re gonna figure out what’s happening and bury it once and for all—”

“I don’t even know where to start,” Dan’s voice was fragile. “Where the hell do we start? We don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Do you really want to go see him now?” PJ asked quietly. “I think maybe you should wait. Let it settle in your head. Come on, come back inside. Maybe Martyn knows something else.”

“How does he know he’s dead?” Dan pushed. “For definite? I mean, he obviously is because he’s a ghost but how does Martyn know that? Do you think he’s seen him?”

“Possibly,” PJ said. “Did you tell Skye that you were coming here today?”

Skye.

“Yeah. He acted a bit strange after I did. It was after I said the name and it’s probably why he didn’t come—” Dan felt a shudder of realisation make its way up his spine. “That’s why he didn’t come. Do you think this is where he used to live?”

“Dan, there’s still so much we don’t know. So much we can’t be sure on. Come on, man, just come back inside.”

And so Dan did. He laid his bike back down to rest and followed PJ in to find his place at the table again. Cat gave him a soft, concerned expression and Chris just looked confused. The conversation continued nevertheless, despite the disruption.

“So that’s all you know? That’s all you have?” Chris was asking. “But he was related to you.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was,” Dan said. “He was related to you in some way and something terrible happened to him, didn’t it?”

Dan thought for a moment about Skye and what this meant for him. Had he been hurt? Why had he come back? Does everyone? Dan hated that he couldn’t ask Martyn. He didn’t want to say that he was friends with this kid in fear of sounding completely deranged. But it was him. It was Skye on the photograph and it was Phil in the asylum, Dan was certain of it and so was PJ.

What does this mean for the three kids?

Dan decided he wasn’t going to let this rest, as Martyn sat amongst silence.

“What happened to him?” Dan egged. “He disappeared and then the investigation was cancelled after a month. Why? Who cancelled it? What do you know, Martyn?”

Martyn shook his head and pressed his lips so tight together that they paled. “He was just a baby,” The words were choked, tight and pressured. “He was ten-years-old. He didn’t—God, he did nothing to deserve it.”

“Deserve what?” The only logical explanation as to why Dan felt such a connection to the boy and his death was because the boy was Skye. He knew him and he was friends with him and, yes, he had to agree with Martyn. He didn’t deserve whatever the hell it was that had happened to him. At least, Dan didn’t think he did from his current viewpoint.

But what could a ten-year-old boy do so harrowing that the only punishment was _death?_

“How can you know he’s dead?” Cat spoke. “Did you—Were you involved? Was someone in the department at the time involved?”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Martyn insisted.

“What was he to you? Phil?”

Martyn’s jaw clenched, throat bobbing as he swallowed, but his voice was deceivingly simple, “Brother. He was my brother.”

Dan had a taste of sympathy for the man then. He didn’t show it—his front didn’t at all crumble—but he felt a twist inside. Adrian’s voice sounded in his ears, face shimmered to the front of his mind, and he tried not to draw potential comparisons to Martyn’s situation.

“God,” PJ breathed. “I’m sorry.”

Martyn just shook his head. “Our father died from a heart-attack not long ago and our mother moved away to Australia to be with our aunt.”

“So,” Dan felt he was being quite apathetic when he continued with the interrogation of sorts, but it wasn’t intentional. “How do you know he’s dead? If my brother—if he ever went missing, I’d have faith he was alive.”

“Over time you lose faith,” Martyn muttered.

“That’s not true.”

Chris kicked him. “Dan.”

“Well, it’s _not_ ,” Dan argued. “He can’t possibly know he’s dead unless there’s more to it. You were certain two minutes ago that he was—you said he didn’t deserve what happened. So what happened and why didn’t he deserve it?”

“His disappearance and the town giving up on him too quickly. All I’ve said already,” Martyn replied. “It’s just been a long time since he went missing, is all.”

“So you just assume he is?”

“Dan,” PJ said. “Stop it.”

“What?” Dan blinked. “I’m not doing anything. Am I the only one who thinks there has to be more to this than he’s letting on?”

“Alright, there’s just a way of doing things.”

“This is my way, PJ—I told you, I’m sick of being in the dark,” Dan’s voice was cold and angled sharply and he thought maybe it was just a vocalisation of all the emotion cooped up inside of him. He looked back to Martyn and firmly asked, “What are you not telling us?”

Martyn let an unexpected smile dance on his lips. A bubble of scepticism gathered up all the air in the room. “I think the real question, kid, is what is _everyone_ not telling you?”

::

“He’s pretty suspicious.”

“He’s not that suspicious. Dan was just being dramatic.”

“Shut up,” Dan snapped from in front of them as they rode home.

“Why are you acting so weird?” Chris grumbled at him. “Bloody walking out and yelling at a grieving guy like a madman.”

“I wasn’t yelling at him.”

“No, but you were pushing him places he obviously didn’t want to go.”

“He wanted us to ask him questions. He wouldn’t have shown us the picture, otherwise,” Dan had a rush of nausea at the reminder of it. His mind was failing to still on anything far from Skye.

_Phil._

Whatever his name was.

“God, that picture freaked me out,” Chris exaggerated. “Proper weird, it was. Phil looked so happy.”

Cat frowned at him. “And why is that weird?”

“Because of what happened. It was eerie. Not in itself, just . . . he didn’t go a nice way, if he went at all. Something horrible happened to him, obviously.”

Dan’s chest ached. It was a pain that stemmed from a friend’s hardship. From knowing they were suffering or, in this case, had been. Dan associating himself as a friend of a dead boy was confusing, to say the least. Until that day he’d been doing it unintentionally and—

And he just really had to talk to Skye. He felt a tug on his body when they rode quietly past the asylum. It looked down over them in the soft glow of sunlight.

“What do you wanna do?” Chris spoke again. “We got the rest of the day to kill, it’s barely twelve.”

“Hey,” PJ said, and Dan looked to see he was addressing him. “We could to your grandfather’s.”

Dan laughed at the suggestion. “Sure, PJ. Let’s go see my grandfather and count the seconds it takes for him to ring my parents. He reaches for the phone and we run.”

PJ sighed, shaking his head. “You don’t need to be sarcastic, it was just an idea.”

“Why would we go anyway? He doesn’t know anything, remember?”

“I don’t care. I want another one of those hot chocolates he made because, damn, it was good. And I just wanna sit and chat about nonsense for a bit. Forget about all this.”

Dan let his eyes trail ahead again. “I’m glad that’s an option for you. Anyway, we can’t just go knocking on my grandfather’s door and asking for hot chocolates. We’re supposed to be at school.”

“Tell him it’s a Saturday,” Chris sounded genuine. “He’s lost his mind, yeah?”

“No. Not all pensioners are expiring halfwits. He’s clever, actually,” Dan defended.

“In what manner?”

“All manners,” PJ answered. “He knows a shit ton about a lot of stuff. Cool stuff. I wanna talk to him about science-y things but Dan’s shitting on my dreams.”

“Dreams? It’s a dream to talk to my grandfather about science?”

“He knows stuff about the universe! He could easily pass as a fifty-year-old, he’s proper young-headed. Epic dude.”

“Can we just go?” Chris, patently impressed, joined PJ.

“And say what?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something when it comes up, I’m good at that. Thinking of crap on the spot. Leave this one to me.”

Dan took a tired breath at the response and gave in. He didn’t really want to battle with them anymore—his head was clustered enough as it was—and he let himself settle on the possibility that his grandfather might make him feel a bit better.

So they rode down to his house. The scene of the pastel sky laying comfortably behind the familiar home tossed peace across one of the storms that erupted inside his skull. Not all of them, needless to say, but one of them.

When Dan’s grandfather opened the door, he had his glasses on the edge of his nose and a newspaper in his hand.

“Well,” he greeted, evidently surprised at the collection of faces. “Hello. Dan?”

“Hey, Granddad,” Dan greeted. “Can I—Can we come in?”

His bushy eyebrows, tinged with grey, drew down. “Shouldn’t you be at school currently?”

“We’ve been having one of those weird weeks,” Chris followed his word and took hold of the conversation. “There was a small fire in a lab about an hour ago and they sent the ones in there home.”

Mediocre, Dan wanted to say. Could’ve done better than that.

“Oh,” Dan’s grandfather looked between the children. “Right. And what caused this fire?”

“Chemicals,” Chris blurted, and shrugged. “You know. Fabric and chemicals. Some kid got his jacket caught on the bunsen burner.”

“Dear me! That doesn’t sound too good at all; he wasn’t hurt, was he?”

“No,” Chris paused. “It was PJ.”

PJ’s shoulders jumped at the sound of his name, and he turned to glare at Chris. When he looked back at Dan’s grandfather, the expression had vanished.

“Me,” he confirmed. “I got myself in a sticky situation.”

Dan decided to chirp up. “He does that a lot.”

“Sometimes,” PJ defended.

“So can we come in?” Cat spoke from the back. “We heard you do some impressive hot chocolates.”

The old man smiled. “Now where on Earth did you hear that?”


	9. IX

**ix.**

When he was handed a hot mug filled with steaming chocolate and he wrapped his fingers tight around it, he let his mind stutter to peace. Even if it was just for a moment.

"What would you kids like on the TV?" Dan's grandfather sat down and picked up the remote.

"Nothing—Can I talk to you about some stuff, Peter?" PJ began, and Dan rolled his eyes. He really didn't need this.

"Stuff?" Peter echoed. "Like we talked about last time? Littlerock and all your mysteries?"

"No, but we can talk about that," PJ grinned. "Yeah, Dan?"

Dan shook his head with a quick breath, eyes out of the front window. Skye. "He doesn't know anything else, PJ."

"Alright, then. Let's talk about some science stuff. What do you know about the concept of atomic theory in space?"

Dan wanted to punch him. He really did. And when he looked over at Cat, just briefly, she had the exact same yearn scrawled onto her face. She smiled at him though, regardless.

"Why are you so interested in space?" Dan's grandfather asked PJ. "I'm curious. It's a whole other dimension to ours, something else entirely, and yet you seem so transfixed by it."

"It's just cool, isn't it?"

"Cool. Cool it is. But it's only cool if you make it cool. Just like everything," The man pushed his glasses higher on his nose. "It is what you make it. If you believe in something, something that is a complete stretch, you have the willpower to create a whole series of other events that make that something seem rational."

Dan was listening now. His attention was prickling around the words and he didn't know why.

"How'd you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," Peter paused, smiling at his grandson. "A lot of life is subjective. Quite often, reality concocts with fantasy. Something you believe might not be what PJ believes, for example. And a lot of what we do in our levels of intelligence is try to convince others of our accuracy. Or, rather, their flaws. Now, with something as complex as space, we might take a concept that is based solely on theory and has no logic behind it at all. And what do you do with that concept? You give it logic. You conjure up an entire book of reasons why you are correct and everybody else isn't."

"Like brainwashing somebody?" PJ asked.

"Not exactly. That's usually a negative thing. This is only negative if you make it," Peter shook his head. "Went off on a bit of a tangent there. All I'm trying to say is that space is only fascinating to you because of the things you've heard, things that are being 'proven' by men who really just do it for a profession. Take something you believe is true and defeat what they do. You have the ability to find and create anything in your imagination."

"Ghosts," Dan said, and everyone looked at him. "What about ghosts?"

"What about them?"

"Does all that apply for them to? For the paranormal world? Could you take an irrational idea and make it rational? What if nobody believes you?"

"I've never thought about that one, I must admit. A lot of people reject the idea of a paranormal universe altogether."

"Which is just close-minded," PJ rolled his eyes, like he was offended.

"Yeah, but," Dan was clinging onto his point. "But could you? If you know something's true?"

Peter folded his hands on his legs. "Truth is such a false term."

"But if you have enough evidence?"

"Of course," Peter nodded. "Most definitely, you could. It applies for most areas of our lives. Sometimes knowledge isn't fact; sometimes it's the complete opposite."

"That's awesome," Chris laughed, eyes bright on the man. "You're awesome, Peter—See, Cat? Ghosts do exist."

"Where's your evidence?" Cat retaliated. "Haven't got none, have you? Come back to me when you do, and I'll happily allow my outlook to be defeated. Irrationality is still irrationality without a trace of rationality."

"Where did you learn that, Granddad?" Dan asked, still all tangled up in his integrity.

"I really just gathered it over the years I've been alive. People won't believe you unless you find a reason for them to and you can find a reason for even the silliest of notions if you look hard enough," he laughed. "That's what a couple years in the police force does to you, kids."

Dan startled. "You were in the force?"

"Indeed. I was head, once."

"What? Why did you never tell me?" Dan moved to the edge of his seat.

"I don't know, actually. I guess it just never came up in conversation."

Dan was sure he hadn't gone fourteen years without asking what his grandfather used to do for a living.

"When was this?" he queried. "Like, when I was a baby or something?"

"Oh, God, no! Many, many moons before your time. 19 . . . 1970's?" Peter pinched his lip in thought. "74, I think."

"74? You were an officer in 1974?" Dan looked to his friends' captivated gazes. 1974. No doubt they were thinking the same as him.

"Do you ever remember the disappearance of a child?" Cat got the words in first.

Peter frowned.

"Phil Lester," Dan added. "Disappeared from this town in 1974 and was never found."

"Oh, yes," Peter voice's travelled a bit distant. "It was a big scandal, that. I never got too involved in it."

"But you were head?"

"Not at that time. I was taking a lot of time off for personal issues—my mother—and I requested demotion because I knew I just wasn't showing the consistency, or the standard. I—" he paused strangely. "I didn't do a lot, if anything at all, on the Lester case."

"Do you know who did?"

Peter shook his head quickly. "Can't remember. It was a long time ago, as I said. Why?"

"Because the case was dropped," Chris crossed his arms. "Just randomly after a month of searching. Lack of evidence, apparently—Would that have been true? Do you remember it?"

"I remember the backlash on the department after the decision was publicised. I have no doubts that it would've been true. Why would I? The force was made of a good group of men back in the day, I can assure you."

"Then why would they have dropped the case of a missing child just like that?" Dan moved forward, voice weighted with a trace of irritation. His mind was running again and he could almost taste the words controlling in his head. _They let him down. He's my friend and he's dead and your force let him down._

Dan's grandfather shrugged simply. "Not enough evidence."

"They didn't give it long to make that conclusion," Dan's voice was cold, and he caught the opposition on PJ's face. "If they gave it a couple more months or just left the case open then something might have come up."

"I don't know," Peter slapped his knees as a signification as he leant forward. "Oh, well. It's all done and dusted now, isn't it? It was decades ago, that."

"But Phil's never been found," Dan continued picking at the scab after making it bleed.

"Maybe one day they'll open the case again. But there's not a lot I can do now."

There was a lot you could do at the time.

Dan rested his half-drank mug down with a clatter and said, "Let's get going then, guys," and he said it with such intention that the three stood up with him.

"Are you off?" Peter questioned.

"Yeah," Dan gave him a brief hug. "Thanks for the drinks, Granddad. I'll come and see you again soon."

"Alright, lad. It was lovely having you all over."

There was a horrible urge to scream that trembled under Dan's frame as they walked out of the house. The moment the front door shut behind them, Dan twisted his hands through his hair and screwed his eyes shut.

"Are you okay?" PJ put a hand on his shoulder.

"Of course I'm not okay. He's dead because of him, PJ," Dan angrily grabbed his bike.

"No, it's not his fault. Don't blame him. He said he wasn't even working at the time—"

"Who's dead? Phil?" Cat was bewildered. "You were saying back at Martyn's that there was no way he could possibly be sure of it and now—Now you're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Dan snapped. Skye danced around his mind. "They fucking let him down, they did, and they've got away with it! There's been no consequences whatsoever!"

"What the hell has gotten into you again?" Chris raised his voice as Dan started riding down the street, increasing his pace so that he was a good few meters ahead. "Dan!"

"Just leave him, Chris!"

"No—Dan!" The sound of tyres scratching against the pavement became loud in Dan's ears they tried to catch up to him.

"Dan!" Cat called.

"Just fuck off, I want to be alone!" he yelled back. Alone. He wanted to see Skye, is what he wanted. He wanted to punch him so fucking hard for the lies he'd no doubt been telling, but he knew he'd never be able to hit him. God, as if he could ever do that.

And when it came to seeing him that next morning around an hour before school, he ended up just hugging him. Because he'd lay in bed hour after hour through the night and watched the numbers on the clock flick by. He'd tallied up the things he'd done wrong and the words he shouldn't have said and he felt his anger chip away at his groggy head when he thought about everything with Skye and Martyn and the department. And he wondered how he'd never considered its link with Littlerock. He had absolutely no idea how the two were connected or why he had ever gotten himself involved in this and he was just so, so tired as he threw himself at Skye.

"Oh," he huffed as Dan squeezed on his chilled body. "Are—Are you okay, Dan?"

"I'm sorry," Dan spluttered into his shoulder. "I'm sorry I didn't figure out sooner and—and I'm not gonna let you do this by yourself anymore, I'm not—"

He sounded like a proper idiot.

"What are you talking about?" Skye whispered. "Have I done something wrong? What did you find yesterday?"

"You," Dan managed, and it was shaded with a throaty laugh. "I found you."

"I don't understand," Skye frowned under the shine of the bulb in the secret room. He looked so much like a child, drowning in Dan's gangly limbs.

He lifted a cold hand and rubbed his thumb under the marks beneath Dan's eyes. "You're tired," he stated softly. "Did you not sleep?"

Dan's stomach wasn't at all stable at the proximity of their faces.

"I know," he said, fingers wrapping around Skye's wrist and taking it down. "I know about you."

"Dan, I'm—" Skye sounded emotionally guilty. "I'm sorry, I really don't understand—"

"You're dead," Dan almost laughed when he finally said it. "That feels so weird to say, you have no idea. You're dead. You're not breathing. It's taken me so long to realise that you're not breathing."

Skye was incredibly hard to read as the words soaked into the air. He let his hands fall against Dan's chest, burning ice into the skin, and gently pushed himself away. He backed up against the wall and swallowed, hard.

"I'm not dead," he lied. "That's—Dan, that's ridiculous."

"Skye, it's true," Dan argued. "I know it is. Don't be scared. You're not even called Skye, are you? You're Phil. Phil Lester—"

"No, stop," The blue-eyed boy squeaked, and fear clashed in a clap of thunder across his face.

"Phil," Dan reached for his wrist, but the boy slapped it away.

"Don't, please. I don't—I—Just leave," His voice cracked in the centre like an ancient structure. "Please, Dan, just leave and never come back—"

Dan's chest was entirely deflated. "Phil."

"Don't call me that!"

"Okay," Dan held his hands up in defence. "Okay, alright. Skye. It's Skye, yeah? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm just confused and—"

"You can't keep messing around with these things, Dan," Skye bordered on the verge of tears.

"What things? All these ghosts and stories and secrets?" Dan listed the mess. "All this shit that I know about now?"

"No, Dan. No, you know nothing."

Dan's humiliation sparked. "I know a lot, actually. My friends and I have done so much work on figuring this out and—"

"And you haven't figured anything out."

"You died and you've come back as a cold, breathless ghost and you were related to Martyn Lester and you went missing in 1974 and everyone in this town let you down," Dan's voice grew louder in a sort-of outward anger that wasn't aimed at the boy. "Everyone let you down and I hate them for it! I'm trying to do this for you, now, okay? It's not about me anymore, it's nothing to do with stupid games or praying for secrets—Something terrible happened to you, didn't it? Something terrible happened and I'm not gonna let it rest just because everyone else wants me to!" 

Skye was shaken by Dan's tone of voice, it was written all over his face in ugly, red marker. Dan still had so many questions wracking up on shelves in his mind that he was working his way through—how did any of this link with Littlerock?—who was yellowwall and why did he know so much?—why was the case ever really closed?—but he knew they weren't going to go anywhere. And nothing else in the world seemed to matter as Skye trembled against the wall and admitted:

"I hate it. I hate it, do you know that? You think it'd be so awesome, wouldn't you? But it's not—it's so, so horrible and nobody understands because there's nobody here and—"

"I'm here," Dan promised, and he found the courage in him to reach forward and carefully take hold of Skye's wrists. "I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, okay? You're not gonna be on your own anymore."

"But you can't stay here with me all the time," Skye whispered.

"You can come with me everywhere. I can take you with me to Spain next year and see if it warms you up," Dan joked, and Skye's mouth drew into a grin that faded too quickly.

"I can't come places with you, Dan . . . Nobody understands."

"I do."

"You don't."

"Then help me," Dan's hands inched down from the boy's wrists along the backs of his palms to lace their fingers together. He squeezed, and a gentle chill shuddered through his bones. "Help me understand."

"You know most of it—All you need to," His eyes flickered down to their loosely locked hands and everything about him crumbled at the fragility of their touch. He looked pained, almost. "It isn't important."

"But—But you're Phil?"

"I'm Phil," he winced on the name.

"What do you want me to call you, then? I don't want to make you uncomfortable, if you don't like that name then we can just keep Skye."

"Do you think that's weird? That I want that?"

"No," Dan shook his head. "Not at all. Do you want Skye? Is that better for you?"

"It hurts less to say. It doesn't feel a lot like me but—but it's better. Easier. It's my ghost name."

"Ah," Dan smiled. "Okay, then. Skye it is. I want this to be easier for you."

Somehow Dan didn't think any of this had been at all easy on him. He squeezed his cold hands again, and Phil—Skye didn't even flinch.

"Can you . . . " Dan couldn't even get the damn words out. "Can you feel that?"

"Feel what?"

He squeezed a third time and murmured, "Our hands."

Skye shook his head and his bottom lip quivered as he took it into his mouth. "I can't feel anything," he admitted. "Haven't ever been able to. Not since I've been Skye."

"That's—" Dan wanted to cry. He felt so, so sorry for him and he couldn't give him anything but sympathy. "It's okay. It'll be okay, mate. What does it feel like to feel nothing?"

"Feel like?"

If Dan wasn't holding the boy's hands, he'd facepalm. "I'm sorry, that was so stupid."

"No," Skye laughed. "It was cute."

Dan's cheeks tinted with a warm pink. His fingers were so cold entwined with Skye's, but he really didn't care. His eyes were a deep blue that made everything still, his black hair was falling down past his brow and his hoodie was completely swallowing him up. His fingers were all thin and bony as Dan tightened his grip in another squeeze. 

His heart was doing backflips when he realised they were holding hands. God, he had such a crush on him. A crush on a dead boy. Wait until Cat hears about that one, he thought. Her bitterness will go through the damn roof.

He hadn't spoken to any of them since he'd ran off yesterday and gone home to an empty house. He didn't want to think about them currently.

"What did you win the trophy for?" Dan asked suddenly, a heavy kind-of gentle. Skye's eyes were confused.

"What trophy?"

"I saw a picture of you in 1972. You'd have been, what, eight?" Dan smiled at him. "What did you win it for? Can you remember?"

Skye rubbed his nose on his sleeve. "Sports day, maybe. Was it golden?"

Dan nodded.

"Yeah, then. Sports day. I got joint-first in the five hundred metres."

"Wow," Dan's eyes were so gentle on the boy. "That's so amazing. I couldn't even do that now."

"Not really," Skye shook his head with a bit of a sad smile. "I got joint."

"Sharing is caring."

"I suppose," he laughed at that. "I used to be real good at sports."

"Did you?" Dan ran a thumb over the back of Skye's bony hand, remembering a beat later that he couldn't feel it. "Is that why you're so thin? Did you . . . Did you die thin? I'm sorry, that sounds really offensive."

"It's not. I'm not offended, don't worry."

"Is that true, then? Were you thin when you were alive?"

"Yeah, something like that," Skye nodded, vague.

"You don't look at all different," Dan whispered. "You're paler and skinnier and you're wearing different clothes, but that's it. I know you said this is a bad thing and you don't like it, but there's nothing not to like. Your appearance hasn't changed and you remember everything—surely it's good?"

"My appearance has changed from what you saw on that picture and it isn't good to remember everything," Skye chewed on his lip. "It's like knowing something's there and not being able to reach it. Like losing something under your bed but you can't reach in far enough to get it back."

"Oh," The line of Dan's mouth settled with guilt. "I'm sorry—Of course it's not good. That must be horrible."

"Don't be sorry," Skye told him. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Dan was letting his thumb draw along the sides of the boy's hands, dipping in between his fingers. He held them tight in a pointless attempt to warm him up as he asked, "Do you remember what happened, then?"

"With what?"

"With you. You're not breathing anymore, there's a reason for it."

"I don't remember that," Skye said quietly. "I can't tell you anything about it."

"Do you know why you've come back? Why nobody else does?—Or does everyone else? The kids have, right? They're ghosts, too?"

"Yeah," Skye confirmed. "But I don't know why. I don't know why for any of us and it's definitely not everyone. We're just special."

Dan laughed. "You definitely are. I don't know about them, however. They're each one of a kind, I'll give them that."

Skye just smiled, and moved distant for a moment. He was watching the way Dan's finger moved along his skin in a look of I wish I could feel that and lost somewhere in his own world. This entire thing was his own world, Dan realised then. He'd just trampled in on it without an invitation but he thought maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Skye wasn't alone now—he understood now—and where was the negativity in that?

"Is he okay?" Skye's voice was almost terrified as it carried the words. "Martyn. Is he okay?"

"He's fine," Dan nodded. "Yeah, he's fine. Living in the same house."

Was he supposed to tell him that his father had died and his mother had moved away?

"That's great," Skye looked expectedly relieved. "Did he tell you about me? Is that how you know?"

"Yeah, he told me most of it. I knew about Phil Lester and I knew about Skye, I just didn't know it was the same person. I just didn't know it was you," Dan shook his head. "They let you down so much. Everybody did."

Skye just shook his head, and Dan didn't know what to say.

"What makes you so different?" he conjured, straying a little. "Than every other dead person, I mean. What's made you and the others come back?"

"It's not really coming back. I'm here psychically but not spiritually. It doesn't feel like it, anyway. I don't felt like myself, if that makes any sense," Skye sighed. "But I don't know. I don't really know a lot about this whole thing, Dan. You're probably asking the wrong person."

"I don't know who else to ask," Dan let his fingers drop from Skye's and watched how the boy only noticed when Dan slid his hands into his pockets. "I could try God. Say a little prayer or go to church."

Skye grinned. "I take it you're not religious?"

"How can you tell?"

"The sarcasm. And the fact that talking to God seemed so ridiculous."

Dan held Skye's eyes. "Are you religious? Did you see the dude when you passed? Because, if you did, then damn, I'm fucked."

"His existence would really effect you that much?" Skye's lips curled in amusement.

"Obviously. I'm an atheist. Probably a nihilist. I've shit on God's name in my fourteen years, I assume his existence would result in a very nasty fate for me."

Skye laughed, then. Properly. His eyes creased at the sides and he wrapped his arms around his little body. "You'll be pleased to know I didn't see the man in question," he finally said, when the laughter had subsided.

"Thank fuck," Dan put a hand to his head. "That just got all too real for me."

"Yeah," Skye paused. "You're a nihilist. What's one of them, then?"

"Just someone who doesn't believe in anything at all. Like an atheist but more. Somebody who believes everything's just pointless."

"You believe everything's pointless?" Skye repeated, slowly.

Dan shrugged and bit his lip. "Isn't it?"

"In moderation, I suppose," Skye evened, but his heart wasn't in it until he continued on. "But what if I told you the point of life is to realise that there is no point?"

Dan let himself reach out for the words and hold them in his heart. "You're—" he paused to catch himself. "I like you. A lot."

Skye laughed and blushed as he pulled down his sleeves. "I like you, too."

"No, you're—You're really smart. You know so much, seriously—" Dan shook his head. "You never answered my question."

Skye stilled in realisation. "Sorry, what was it?"

"Why are you so different? Why have you come back?"

"I don't know. You need to figure it out."

"Me?" Dan blinked. "Why me?"

"Because—" The word was carefully crafted around a breath that dragged it down. "Because I can't leave. I can't leave this asylum."

"Why?"

"I just can't."

"You mean literally?"

Skye nodded. "I can't."

Dan didn't think he should ask again. He started to retract from that topic, but then—

"Physically, Dan. I can't leave."

Physically.

"And you don't know why?" Dan waited for him to shake his head. "Okay. Okay, then, leave it to me. I'll try and figure out what's happening here."

"You're doing an awful lot of figuring out lately," Skye stared at him with dashes of softness soaking in around his gaze. "God, what have you gotten yourself into?"


	10. X

**x.**

Oakwell was bleak that morning. Frost was crusting into the air and picking away at everything whole. It was brushing at winter, just about, coming head-first into the middle of November and Dan could feel it prominently as he rode all the way from the asylum to school. His fingers were cold and tight around the bars and he thought maybe being around Skye so much was preparing him for the season.

Morning fog prickled lethargically just above the town and it was like it was swallowing it up. Nobody would miss it if it were to just disappear under the mist, Dan thought. Nobody even knew it was there, without looking at a map of the country.

Dan rubbed his hands together as he headed through the school's hallway. Children tugged on their hats and unzipped their fleeces and it felt like everything was being reborn. The wake of a new season; the wake of the best season. Christmas in Dan's house was just the most incredible thing when it rolled around. Lights and food and festivity.

When Dan thought about the word happiness, he thought about Christmas Day. Snow and chattering teeth and hot drinks and long sleeves. It was bottled up over the course of the year and when December fluttered in, the glass of the bottle smashed and a thousand tiny pieces of happiness flew everywhere. Dan had reached the age where the emotion was not measured in the illusion of hooves on the roof as he slept or the overall calculation of how much had been spent on him when all was done and dusted, but measured just in the little details.

PJ, Chris and Cat were stood at PJ's locker when Dan approached. The door of the locker was open and he slammed it shut, startling them all.

"You bloody idiot," Chris shoved him. "Must you do that every time we're minding our own business?"

"Oh, it's a necessity," Dan grinned, cold hands burying deep in his pockets.

"You're in a good mood," Cat noted his smile and her lips pressed together in an expression of intrigue. "Something happened?"

"It's winter, probably," Chris said. "He gets high on all the Christmas shit." 

Cat smiled at Dan. "That it?"

He shook his head. "I went to the asylum this morning. I was up bright and early."

"To get the worm," Chris joked, and then laughed. "Did you have fun with him?"

"It wasn't anything like that, you absolute ass."

"Why else would you be so—"

PJ grabbed Dan's arm, excited. "What did he admit?"

Dan couldn't even contain it. "Everything. I mean, pretty much. Everything he knew."

"He told you he's dead? For real? He said he wasn't breathing and that he's a ghost?"

"Who's a ghost?" Cat asked, forcing her hands between Dan and PJ. "Hey! Answer me. Who?"

"Phil," PJ beamed at the name.

"Lester?"

"He means Skye," Dan spoke. "Skye is Phil. He's a ghost. Phil's ghost."

"Skye is the ghost of the ten-year-old who went missing?" Cat echoed, probably as a means to push the sentence closer to reality. "Guys, what do you take me for?"

"It's the truth," PJ glared at her.

"That's so damn epic, holy shit!" Chris squeaked in excitement. "Does he look the same and everything? Is that how you know? Is he transparent? Can he walk through walls?"

"Chris," Cat's teeth were clenched. "Knock it off. They're bullshitting, how are you this dumb?"

"Fuck off," PJ snapped at her. "You're just jealous because Dan's in love with a ghost boy and not _you_ —"

"That's got nothing to do with it!" Cat defended, voice cracking, and Dan almost blurted an apology.

"It so has," Chris joined. "Your competition is a dead kid and he's _winning_ and—"

"Guys, just leave her alone," Dan said, on a sigh. "That isn't it, she just doesn't believe. We'll have to show him to her. She'll have to meet him."

Cat made a sound, and distaste intertwined with humiliation on her face. "I'll pass, thanks."

There was a convolution in Dan's nonchalance. "What do you mean?"

"I don't want to meet him," Cat rephrased. "I don't have any interest in him because he has nothing to do with Phil Lester or Littlerock."

"Are you serious right now?" Dan snapped. "You have no interest in him?"

"Why the hell would I? What would I find so great about him, Dan? The whole 'I want to see if he's cute' thing has gone right out the window if he's apparently a _ghost_!"

"Oh, he's cute, Cat," Dan defended, fingers tightening into fists at his sides. "Yeah, he's pretty fucking cute regardless of whether he breathes or not."

"You're just saying that because you fancy him—And the only reason you fancy him anyway is obviously because he's so damn mysterious and you just love that, don't you? Now you're even more in love with the fact that he's 'dead'—Ever thought about the possibility that he's lying to you?"

Dan was mad. Dan was so _beyond_ mad—What the hell had Skye done to piss her off? What the hell had he done to piss anyone off? "Why would he do that?"

"Because he likes you too, maybe, and he knows it'd score him a whole lot of points to lie about being a ghost! Especially because you probably came outright with all these facts that point to him and—"

"Do you even hear yourself?" Dan interrupted her with a cold laugh. "Honestly, Cat. He looks exactly the same as Phil and he's freezing cold and he's so pale and—And you've never even met him, yet you're talking about him like he's nothing!"

"Because you're talking about him like he's everything!" They were attracting a sea of unwanted attention and the waves continued to roll in as their voices boomed louder.

"He is!" Dan yelled. "Right now, he is! He's currently all I care about and all that matters and even if I'm the only one who does, I'm gonna help him! Because nobody else ever has—This piece of shit town let him down when he went missing and it resulted in his death and you're seriously gonna stand there saying he's making it up?"

"Dan—" PJ reached for Dan, but he shoved him off.

"Well, fuck you!" Dan spat at her. "Fuck you! He's alone and he's hurting and he doesn't understand what's going on and you think it's a good idea to leave him in the dark?"

"Did I say that?" Cat shouted back. "No, I didn't! But you're acting like this is a normal thing, Dan! You need to stay the hell away from him because you can't be sure he's safe—"

"Safe? He's perfectly safe, Cat! What do you think he's gonna do? Use me as his sacrifice?"

"Well, you never bloody know, do you?"

"What? And you're accusing _me_ of being irrational—"

"That's enough!" PJ cut a hand between them. "Line! Drawn! See it? I have drawn it, and it's over! Do you hear?"

Dan felt like his bones were shaking in his fit of sudden rage. He didn't intend to lose it with her like that, but it was just—Skye was his weakness lately, it seemed. He'd let himself get so invested in the situation and now that he'd had the revelation of Skye's genuine identity, he really was just completely lost in him.

"We can sort this out easily," PJ was continuing. "We get Skye to come out and meet us later today after school—"

"He can't," Dan said, tone even but shaking from its intensity. "He can't leave the asylum."

"What?" PJ blinked. "Why?"

"He just can't. Physically. Something prevents him."

"Why the asylum? Why there?" Chris asked. "Is he tied in with it?"

"I don't know—"

"Dan!" PJ jolted. 

Dan flinched at the abruptness. "What?"

"The Project! Project 16.8.9.12—and then the address! Project Phil, Phil Lester! That's him, that experiment was him!"

"They named an experiment after him now, did they?" Cat muttered to herself.

" _Yellowwall_ sent it to us, actually," PJ defended.

She laughed, sarcastic. "Reliable source."

"Shut up," Dan shook his head at them and pressed his fingers into the sides of his head. "Project Phil Lester. Why the fuck did we only just remember this?"

"I don't know, but I'm glad you did," Chris said something. "I was starting to wonder when this kid was gonna start linking with Littlerock."

"We need to write down what we have," Dan looked between them. "Does anyone have a pen and paper?"

"I mean, I do, but," Cat shrugged.

"Listen, I'll let you meet him today so you shut the hell up about him being a liar and see that he isn't just some asshole," Dan said to her. "Now stop being so goddamn bitter and write down what I say."

"Fine," she begrudgingly dropped her bag from her back to retrieve the items and Dan huffed. When she had got what she needed, she leant against the locker and waited.

"Okay," Dan began. "Let's start with Littlerock."

Cat wrote the word in block capitals at the top of the page.

"Now Phil's name," Dan watched her hand move and continued to talk. "And the year he went missing and the years the asylum was silent and the year it closed."

Cat cleared her throat once she had finished. "Littlerock Mental Asylum. Phil Lester: missing in 1974 (age ten), the same year as the period of silence in the asylum began. This period ended in 1978, and the asylum proceeded to close in 1979."

Dan wracked his brain for ties between the years. He kept jumping back and referring to Cat's suspicions in the library from a few days ago:

_I keep thinking it could be experiments. Terrible ones that went wrong._

"Project Phil Lester," Dan repeated, and everything tumbled into place. A spark of victory ached somewhere in his chest and, God, he hadn't felt so proud of himself in a long time. "That's it! PJ, you'd say Skye is around the same age as us, right?"

"Why are you still calling him that?" Cat interrupted, and Dan waved his hand to hush her.

"Yeah," PJ answered. "Fourteen to fifteen-ish."

Dan took the paper from Cat and detailed his explanation using a physical representative. "Okay, so Littlerock's period of silence lasted from 74 to 78. That's four years. Phil went missing in 74 when he was ten—And what's ten plus four?"

"Fourteen?"

Dan smiled. "The same age as us. The same age he is now."

The information was faltering the group—they were clearly struggling with grasping it—and finally Chris said, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"The period of silence ended because Project Phil Lester ended. Phil died in 78, when he was fourteen—"

"He's fourteen now because he died when he was fourteen!" PJ clicked his fingers. "Shit, I get it!"

"Thank God."

"Wait, wait," Chris stopped. "So how does this mean Phil was involved in Littlerock?"

"I don't know, but he was obviously controlling this period of silence. He was there for four years, he had to be," Dan knew there was a crack somewhere in the smooth surface of evidence he'd presented, but he wasn't going to look for it yet.

For now, they had something.

::

The school day dragged itself by. Dan had a momentary panic that he would be asked about his absence yesterday, but nothing came of it. He ended up spending the morning and half of the afternoon just pondering on the asylum and the town's history and thinking about Skye. He missed him a lot, and he hoped he missed him too. They obviously had some sort-of unspoken connection.

After school had finished, Dan took his friends down to the asylum. Cat moaned on the walk up to the reception about her potential danger, even after Dan had promised her that she would be fine. PJ made a point of saying that if she really didn't believe in ghosts, she was pretty damn scared of nothing.

"And there's this secret room with one bulb that works where he always sleeps," Dan informed them. "It backs onto the warden's office, and he's usually in there. Come on, it's at the end of the corridor."

"He has awesome clothes," PJ chirped. "They're a really cool red."

"How do you explain that?" Cat asked him, smiling like she'd found something to grab onto that worked in her favour.

"What?"

"That he's in those clothes. If he died here and he was some sort-of patient, then he'd be in a hospital gown."

"We never said he was a patient," Dan reminded. "He might not have been, we're hazy in that field of information. Just calm down and trust me."

"Yeah, okay," she responded sarcastically.

PJ expressed a vocal fear of running into the kids as they walked. Dan actually had the strangest hope to see them again; he wanted to confront them. And not with the gentle caution he had confronted Skye with.

The warden's office was smaller when the four of them cramped inside. The walls were still a dingy grey and the cabinet was pushed in barricade of the little room. Dan called for PJ's help, and the pair worked together to slide it from the doorway. An ocean of light rushed into the room.

"Bloody hell," Chris put his hands to his eyes, letting himself adjust to the shine. "You're really not lying about this, are you?"

"No," PJ said and stepped through into the room. Dan grabbed his arm and pulled him back, shaking his head.

"Let me go first. I need to tell him he's got the whole squad coming to judge him."

"We aren't gonna judge him," Chris assured. "I just really wanna see him."

Dan shook his head again and stepped through himself anyway. He moved into the room and found Skye sitting in the corner with a blanket at his feet, and his hand in a packet of sweets. He was throwing one—still secured tightly in a wrapper—up in the air and catching it. He halted when he saw Dan.

"Dan," His entire face ignited. "I didn't think you were coming back today."

"Just couldn't stay away," Dan smiled. "Are those the sweets I gave you?"

"Yeah, um—" Skye looked stumped, uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, I can't eat them. Since I've . . . Since I've been Skye, I've had no appetite. Suppose I'm not eating for anything anymore. No organs to keep functioning."

"Yeah, that's true."

"I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Because you bought them for me and I can't eat even eat one—I should've just told you about this sooner, I was just scared because I couldn't trust you and didn't know if you were gonna go tell the world."

"Don't be ridiculous," Dan said, calm. "It's no big deal. I'm not gonna ditch you now just because you won't eat my sweets."

"Yeah," Skye fiddled with one in his lap. "They're keeping me entertained. I can throw and catch them and stuff."

"Improving your sports skills, I see. Phil would be proud."

Skye smiled. "I like that."

"What?"

"You acting as if we're two different people. Because it feels like we are, definitely. I don't feel like Phil—I don't feel like what I remember it feels like to be Phil."

"I guess death is empty. It doesn't feel like anything and maybe that's because the cold's making you numb."

Skye nodded, agreeing. "It feels so weird to think that I'm not really alive. I usually try to just ignore it. It's probably the same as thinking you are alive. If you think about the fact that your heart is beating all the time, it starts to make you feel strange."

"I don't like thinking about that either," Dan admitted, and silence pooled in his ears. He took a breath and glanced back to the door, where he could see the distant figures of his friends. He nervously began again with: "So, um, you've met PJ."

Skye looked up with a smile. "I have. I like him. He's quite funny."

"Controversial idea," Dan shrugged. "Anyway, he's just outside the door. And so are my other two friends, Chris and Cat. They wanted to meet you."

Skye's eyes snapped to the door in fright.

"It's okay," Dan knelt down to the boy and put a hand on his leg. So cold. "They're not gonna do anything and they're not gonna tell. You trust PJ and he's the worst out of the lot."

Skye gave a breathy laughed that lacked any real emotion. There wasn't anything in it but an anchor of fear, and Dan didn't know why he felt so guilty.

"Don't worry," he whispered. "I wouldn't put you in any danger. You trust me, don't you?"

Skye nodded slowly. 

"Yeah? You promise?" Dan stared at him, studying. "Because, if you don't, tell me what I have to do to fix it. And it'll all be okay—I want you to trust me."

"I do," Skye rested his hand atop of Dan's. "I promise I do. I trust you the most."

"Good. That's good," Dan smiled. "Is it okay if I bring them in now?"

Skye shifted, pushing himself back against the wall and nodding his head.

"You sure? Do you want a bit longer just with me?"

"No, I think I'm okay."

"Alright. One second then," Dan turned back to the door. "Guys, you can come in!"

There was a bit of a clatter to signify the group's entrance. Dan studied Skye's reaction carefully, watching as he backed up further into the wall and tugged on the ends of the blanket so that it came up to his chin. He wondered—just for a second—if he ever felt the cold. He hoped he didn't.

Chris walked in at the front of the trio and stopped just before Skye. His eyes were perfect circles in his skull, sketched into shape with surprise, and he tilted his head to the side. Skye cowered under the distinguishing gaze.

"Dude," Dan pushed him. "Don't stare at him like that, Jesus."

Chris blinked and looked away momentarily. "Sorry, it's just—It's him. It's Phil. Phil Lester."

"Yeah, I know," Dan said slowly. "I'm sure he does, too."

"Are you really dead, as Dan insists?" Cat's voice fluttered in from behind Chris. She was staring, herself, at the boy, eyes narrowed like she was trying to read him in codes.

Skye nodded and stuttered out, "Y-Yeah."

"You sure about that?" she snapped.

Dan pierced a glare into her harshness and allowed sunlight to seep in through it, igniting it up. She glanced at him and her face softened as a resemblance.

"Do you have any idea why you're like this?" she gently inquired, something different to her previous question.

"I don't, I'm sorry," Skye shook his head.

"Nothing at all?" PJ sat down cross-legged beside him. "Come on, man. You can trust me. Ignore these guys—What do you remember?"

"Remember?"

"Yeah, about your earlier life."

Dan rolled his eyes.

"Not a lot," Skye whispered. "I don't remember how I died or anything like that. I don't really like talking about that stuff."

"Yeah, PJ, just leave him," Dan yanked on his shirt, and he stood up with a look of failure. "You guys only came to see if he was legit, you can't just start an interrogation."

"Excuse me, I've met Phil before."

Dan winced. "Skye. It's Skye. He wants Skye."

"Whatever it is now, he used to be alive as somebody else and that's all that counts," Cat spoke. "Skye, how are you sure you're not alive?"

"I'm not breathing," he put a hand on his chest, and Dan's heart wrenched. "And I'm cold and pale—I was always pale, but not this much. I don't need to eat and I can't feel anything, either."

"Anything at all?"

"No."

"So there'd be no point in punching you now for taking Dan from me?" Cat's tone was light, easy, and she was joking. Most definitely.

"Taking Dan from you?" Skye obviously didn't understand.

"Yeah, he—"

"Leave it!" Dan interrupted quickly. "Just leave it, that _seriously_ isn't important—"

"You know what is?" Chris suddenly said, and his finger was pointing up at the security camera in the corner of the room when Dan caught him. "That camera's working."

"I know," Dan replied, unfazed. "Skye uses it when he's bored sometimes."

"That's weird."

"Not really. He can't leave."

Dan felt like he understood everything, for some reason.

"Oh, yeah," Chris handed Skye an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. That must suck."

"It gets boring sometimes," Skye shrugged. "And lonely. Really lonely."

There was a moment of silence in the little room. Everything was still, motionless and without volume, until Cat moved to take the place PJ had once had on the floor beside Skye. "Hey, I know you said you don't like talking about before but it's really important we know what you remember."

Skye was looking at her with big eyes and a soft voice. "Why?"

"So we can help. It'll give you some mental relief to find out why you're here."

"It will?"

"Yeah," Cat nodded. "So, um, so how long have you been living like this?"

"Living?" Skye smiled. "You mean, dead? How long have I been living as a dead kid?"

"Yeah. I'm not really a pro at official paranormal terms." 

"Neither am I," Skye admitted, and looped a finger through a loose piece of red cotton in his hoodie. "For a long time. I don't know exactly."

"Would you say it's been about as long as it's been since this place shut?"

"Maybe. There's never been anybody here but the kids and I. Just a couple of ghosts in an abandoned asylum."

"I see. Take a guess at how long it's been."

Skye pondered in silence for a little while. "Maybe about thirty years."

"Thirty years?" Dan couldn't function on the brutal honesty in Skye's tone. He had been alone—cold and dead—for thirty years.

"Wow, that's—That's rough," Cat took a breath. "Now, what do you remember of your past?"

"Okay, um," Skye paused and let his eyes scamper around the room in the thought. "I remember before."

"Before?"

"Before I went missing. Before 74."

"And you don't remember anything after that? Like, who took you? Or why you didn't show at school that day?"

"No. It's all just a bit fuzzy."

_There goes Project Phil Lester._

"Can't you make anything out of the fuzz?"

"No," Skye murmured. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Cat leant across and patted his leg—and then flinched back. "Fuck, you are cold."

Skye pulled his sleeves down, dashed with shame. "I know."

"Don't worry about it, it was just a bit of a shock," Cat sighed and turned back to the boys. "Any of you dimwits know any paranormal investigators around here?"

"Oh, I see how it is now," PJ grinned, smile reflecting on the other two also. "You and your paranormal interests."

"Shut up," she scoffed at him.

"Do you believe now?"

"Yeah, whatever. It's kinda hard not to," she paused. "Answer my damn question."

"No, I know of no investigators," PJ responded, delayed, and the others gave the same reply.

"Alright then, where do we go from here?" Cat crossed her arms.

"You go on that date with Dan and make amends," PJ smiled. "And Chris and I find an investigator nearby."

"Date?" Skye echoed.

"Date," Dan dug his hands uncomfortably into his pockets. "Not really a date, PJ."

"Yeah," Cat agreed. "It isn't. We said it wouldn't be when we organised it. Do you even still wanna go?"

 _No._ Dan nodded, defiant against his thoughts. "Course I do. Let's just go straight from here, yeah?"

"Sounds like a plan," she smiled at him.

"You can, um," Skye pushed the packets of sweets still in his lap to her legs. "You can take these, if you want. Saves you buying food wherever you end up going."

"Oh," Cat took hold of them. "Thank you."

"Skye, they're yours," Dan insisted. "Have them."

"No, I'm not ever gonna eat them," He didn't look up when he spoke, and Dan felt the aching loss of blue. "Just put them to good use. They weren't made to keep people entertained."

"Skye."

"It's fine," Skye shook his head, still not moving his eyes to Dan.

"We should probably get out of here," PJ crackled through their strange conversation. Something was odd between Dan and Skye, off. "Chris and I have gotta do some digging."

"Yeah, okay," Cat stood from the floor and brushed herself down. She walked across the room and followed them to the exit, where she then halted.

"Dan," she pressed. "You coming?"

Dan wanted to stay with Skye. He looked so small—small and scared and lost—in the corner of the room and like anything in the world could hurt him. Physically, it couldn't. But Dan knew Skye's brain was laying, beaten on some pavement, and everybody that passed was just kicking at it for fun. And Dan wanted to be that one person who pushed them all away and protected it, protected him, with the excuse of _he doesn't deserve this_ taped to his forehead.

"See you soon, okay?" he carefully said to Skye.

"Alright. Bye."

Everything seemed to crumble around them, and Dan didn't have enough glue to put it all back together.


	11. XI

**xi.**

Dan and Cat went to the local cinema. It was a small building bordering the street home to their school; everything was just so cramped in Oakwell that it was hard to look somewhere for something and not find another.

The evening was prickling in an orange haze on the horizon. Dan and Cat chose out a movie with two men before a gang of zombies on the cover and proceeded to use Skye's sweets as replacement food. They bought a couple smoothies, too.

"Thanks for coming to this, Dan," Cat said, as they walked down to their screen. "I know you'd probably rather be elsewhere."

Dan shook his head, drink in one hand and bag in the other. "No, not at all. The movie looks great."

"Yeah, but I doubt you want to be seeing it with me," she laughed. "You know, after what happened earlier."

Dan sighed. "Let's just forget it happened. I'm sorry I yelled and caused a scene—I want to be here."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm positive."

"Good," Cat stopped before the correct door and opened it. Their voices dulled to a whisper as they navigated their seats through the dim light. "Bet you'd still rather be here with him, though."

They say down a couple rows from the front, just as Dan said: "Stop creating competition."

"Are you saying there is none?"

"Maybe."

"Good or bad thing for me? Because he's really pretty," she sighed and let the straw of her drink dangle in the corner of her mouth. "His eyes are beautiful."

"Hhm," Dan hummed, in probable agreement. They were.

"And he speaks really softly—Have you noticed? You probably have. He speaks like he's talking to something really special, but he does it all the time. Every sentence. He's all gentle and nervous and it's so adorable."

Dan smiled at her. "I thought I was supposed to be the one crushing on him."

She shoved his shoulder. "Shut up. I'm allowed to admire and I'm allowed to talk about him. This isn't a date—Besides, you love him or whatever."

Dan started peeling wrapper off a sweet. " _Whatever_. And I don't."

"You don't, what?"

"Love him," Dan put the sweet on his tongue and kicked his feet up onto the chair in front of him.

"You're kidding, right?" Cat slapped his legs. "Get them off."

"No, the movie isn't on yet. Nobody currently cares about seeing my dirty trainers," he leant back on his seat. "And, no, I'm not kidding. Contrary to popular belief amongst you lot, I'm not in love. You guys gotta drop this topic because it's getting boring."

"Boring. Dan, have you seen the way you look at him?"

"I am yet to take my eyes out of my skull and use them for that purpose."

"I'm not playing around, Chris is right!"

"Never thought I'd see the day you two come out on the same page," Dan pressed his index finger to her temple. "What's going on in that mind of yours, Catherine?"

"Uncalled for," she pushed him away, then let her smile return. "I admit, I was pretty bitter about it before but after seeing you two in the same room, it's hard not to ship it."

"Ship it?" Dan echoed. "Stop that right now. Don't go throwing that kind-of lingo around. And stop talking about Skye; talk about death or bands or something. We're emos."

" _Emos_."

"We are."

"I don't like My Chemical Romance," Cat reminded. "I'm out. That didn't take long, did it?"

"Because you've never listened to them."

"I don't intend to, either," she said. "Anyway, back to my original point. You've fallen for him, haven't you?"

Dan ignored her, digging into the bag for another sweet.

"Dan," she continued, and shifted in her seat. "Are you gay?"

He coughed on the taste of strawberry in the back of his throat. "Cat, bloody hell!" 

"Well, are you?"

"No!" he said the word too harshly, and he knew he did, so he didn't leave it there. "I mean, I don't—I don't think so? Probably not. Why are you asking me this shit? You're supposed to like me."

"I do. A bit," she shrugged. "But I'm slowly killing the addiction. Are you having doubts?"

"Are you having trouble dropping this?"

She sighed. "Answer me. Let me be here for you."

"Here for me? Cat, I don't need a counsellor. I'm perfectly fine with it if I realise I am—which I might be. Skye's the first one though, so there's a high chance it doesn't equate to an entire sexuality change."

"It's not a sexuality _change_. You were never decided, you've probably never thought about it before."

"True," Dan quietly agreed with her on something. "But don't go on about it, okay? There are bigger things going on right now and it's not like I can just kiss him."

"You totally could."

"What would be the point?" Dan looked into his drink in self-pity. "Not like he could feel it."

"Yeah, I suppose. That's kinda sad," she said, all melancholy.

"It is," Dan moved the straw around in his drink, and so carefully whispered, "I'd probably do it if I knew he could feel it."

Cat's lips drew up into a gentle smile. "You should anyway. Do something about your feelings because people forget about them before you do. And even if he can't feel it—he won't forget about it."

::

A thick coat of darkness was laying itself to rest across the town when the movie had finished around two hours later, setting up for the night. Dan had three unread messages on his phone as they departed the cinema, tossing their empty smoothie-cartons away.

"PJ," he informed, eyes on his screen. "Says they haven't found a guy in the town but Chris' uncle knows a lot about a possible supernatural world and he's coming down to see them soon."

"How long is soon?"

"Christmas."

"Seriously?" Cat threw her arms in the air. "We give them over two hours and they produce that shit. Christmas! What a load of crap."

"Peej says Chris could ring him tomorrow," Dan continued, unfazed by her whining. "But it'd have to be after school because his uncle lives in America."

"Tell him that's the best idea they've had. And we all have to be there, so he can do it as soon as we finish. We each got a fair share of questions for the guy."

::

When Dan considered going to see Skye that night after dropping Cat home, he thought maybe their story was becoming a little repetitive. But, under the circumstances, that wasn't either of their faults.

Dan felt himself wishing the pretty boy had a phone. Because then maybe they could communicate without Dan having to enter a horrifically mysterious asylum with a bunch of crazed kids and dirty secrets alone.

He told himself he was doing it for Skye, who had to live there. That he probably wouldn't do it for anybody else. The boy's story was just so tragic and heart-wrenching to Dan that visiting him at the asylum late at night was, undoubtedly, a necessity. It was part of a routine, one that he was deigned to follow. This routine was based solely on the fact that Skye was a dead boy who'd battled loneliness for around thirty years and he was holding onto Dan with tight hands because he was the only thing he'd had to hold onto in a long time. And even if he couldn't feel him, he was there.

Dan was there.

He was there as he entered the little room and found Skye sat in the corner, a bit slouched. Dan coughed in the doorway—torch flickering at him—and the boy looked up, eyes careful and softer than ever under the light.

"Do you never sleep?" Dan chuckled, moving and dropping himself down beside Skye. He sat himself close.

Skye shrugged at the question, and Dan felt the movement. "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Dan's laugh spluttered out of his mouth and he choked a bit on his humour. "Dude," It sounded like a giggle.

"Dude," Skye reiterated with a frown. "Don't call me dude."

Dan just smiled at him, thinking he liked that they wouldn't do that. He liked that they weren't . . . like that. God, he really had to stop reading into these things. PJ always told him about seeing a bird when it wasn't there. Looking up at the sky and there only being an ocean of blue and a string of cloud, but Dan catching a bird. There wasn't actually one there, but there was one to him because he'd created it in his head.

This was kinda the same, he thought. This whole situation with Skye.

There had been an easy silence for a little while that had gathered all the words once floating in the room and kept them locked tight away until:

"How was your date?"

Dan looked at Skye, head titled to the side, and smiled. "Good, yeah. The movie was great."

"That's good," Skye let his eyes wander to the door, and then back to Dan. "Thanks for coming back, Dan. Every time you do. Nobody else does, nobody else ever would, and it means a lot. I'm sure you'd rather be out somewhere else."

"It's funny," Dan replied. "Cat said the same thing about us going to watch the movie. I don't know where I'd rather be—Probably here."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he smiled. "I like going out and buying smoothies and watching weird movies but I'd much rather be with you. If you could leave here, I'd take you out. And we could go do those things, together. Just so you know."

Skye looked flattered by the words. "I hardly ever went to the movies when I was . . . Well, before this happened."

"All the more reason to take you. Think about all the ghost movies we would watch and prove them wrong," Dan grinned. "And I could take you home and show you my room. It's not that cool, really, but it's got a comfortable bed and thick sheets—which you need."

Dan let his fingers trail along the lining of a thin blanket.

"Doesn't matter really," Skye said. "I can't feel anything. But, thanks. I'd love to go, if there was ever a chance I could. Wouldn't your parents find it weird to have a dead boy in your room?"

"They wouldn't figure it out. If it took me this long, they don't have a chance. They'd probably just think you were pale and infecting the house with your fever," Dan nudged him and they shared a smile. "They might find it weirder that I have a boy in my room. Period. Forget the dead thing."

"Why? We're not . . . Are we like that?"

Dan's heart stuttered—unintentionally traveling into that field of conversation—and he felt a movement in his stomach. "Like, what?"

"Like, together—or just like each other," Skye said quietly. "Do we like each other? Are we that?"

Dan breathed slowly. "That. That was bad when you were alive, wasn't it?"

"People said it was. I don't know. Feelings can't be bad, can they? Unless they're hurting someone."

"Some people insist it's harmful."

"But it's not," Skye said. "I know that—I always thought maybe I could be."

"You knew when you were just a kid? When you were alive?"

"I thought things. Things they said was bad. I looked at the wrong people and the kids always called me it at school," Skye played with his sleeves, uncomfortable. "I tried not to think about it too much but—but, yeah. I wished they understood it was difficult when I was that young and struggling with stuff like that."

"It's okay now. Better. People understand more—understand you, understand us," Dan felt strange identifying with the word for what seemed like the first time. It wasn't a bad strange; it was a comforting. "They're assholes for bullying you."

"It's okay. I just didn't have a lot of friends and I'm weird. Still weird."

"You're lovely," Dan told him quietly. "I think you're lovely. I bet they'd like you if they knew you were a ghost."

Skye grinned. "I bet they would. I'd have loads of friends."

"Sometimes it doesn't matter how much of something you have. Sometimes it just matters that you have it at all."

"But I didn't."

"You do now."

"You," Skye smiled at him, lips barely tugging since it was all in his eyes. "You're my friend. My best. I'm probably not yours, but you're mine."

"I won't be telling PJ you like me more than him."

Skye smiled. "You're just—You're here for me. And you want to figure it out just as much as I do and I can trust that you won't give up, even if the others do. You're my best friend because of that. Unless, like—Unless we're more."

Dan moved the torch so he could make out the shape of Skye's face. The sketch of his jaw was prominent and the blue in his eyes ringed deeper, thicker, around his black pupils. "Aren't you scared?"

"Not anymore," he was whispering. "Why should I be? Nobody's gonna care. I'm a ghost. That means more than me admitting to my feelings, which I did a while ago. Before I met you. I realised there are more important things than what people consider important because they tend to not be important at all. Like breathing."

"That's brave," Dan whispered back, with a smile at the final sentence. "You're brave. Braver than I could ever be."

"Not really. Thirty years is a lot of time to think, and to not be brave."

"You've done this by yourself for thirty years—That's brave."

Skye shrugged. "It really isn't that big of a deal. When I realised nothing could hurt me, it was okay. I've been okay ever since because you can't die if you're not alive. And this has never been a matter of surviving."

"True. What's the worst thing?"

"The loneliness, probably," Skye looked around, gaze pushing through the darkness. "And being able to remember things from before. Like, up to when I went missing. All the good stuff, I can remember, and I wish I couldn't. Because it's like a parallel; what I have now compared to what I had then. And everything's a mess now, when it used to be fairly in order. It's horrible because it's like a before and after—I know I had no friends before and hardly anybody ever noticed me but people still had the chance to, which they don't now. Doing this whole ghost thing really isn't about strength of body because I can't feel anything and it doesn't matter what I do. It's just strength of mind, being able to get through the loneliness, which juxtaposes with the nothingness. Because even when you're alive and you think you have nothing, you can feel that you're still breathing and that's something. Now there's really nothing—physically, it's emptiness and mentally, it's just—just existing in the face of adversity."

"You're really grown up—Real mature," Dan whispered, awed. He was a bit struck by the words and they nestled deep under his ribs. "I suppose you've had to be, but it's still amazing. You talk with so much conviction and—and it's so great to listen to you. Really. Talk some more."

Skye looked embarrassed, cheeks tinted and teeth coming over his lip. "I'm not used to talking a lot, Dan. It's been a while."

"Doesn't matter. Talk about something you like, or you used to do," Dan prompted. "Sports? You said you liked sports."

"I do—or, I did. I can't see myself getting involved in sports now. Not just because I'm dead either; it just doesn't interest me."

"What are you interested in?"

"Nothing, really. Talking to you is enough."

Dan smiled at him. "I don't think anyone's ever said that to me before."

"Yeah, well," Skye paused, interest trailing for a moment. "Did your friends find anything?"

"Sorry?"

"With the ghost thing. They said they were gonna find an investigator. PJ and . . . and—"

"Chris."

"Chris," Skye clicked his fingers. "Him. Did they find one in town?"

"No, but we're gonna talk to Chris' uncle about it tomorrow. And then we'll come back here and fill you in, yeah?"

"Okay," Skye nodded. "Thanks, Dan. For going out of your way. I know I'm a bit of a demand."

"No, you're not. We like doing this. It's unbelievably exciting to stumble on secrets that your town wants to keep hidden away. It's like the rush of breaking the rules."

"Yeah, but—" Skye looked anxious. "You're not gonna be in any trouble, are you? Any danger?"

Dan didn't know the answer to that. He had no way of being certain, he realised.

"Of course I'm not," he said anyway. "Where's the danger in knocking on a door from the past?"

Skye shook his head, and a taste of mystery spread across his face. "It'll be dangerous when someone opens it."

::

Talking to Chris' uncle turned out to be more of a failure, than anything. More of a you made this worse than a you made this better. But not because they didn't find anything or he didn't present any leads.

But because he did.

As they left school, they headed up to the library and hid themselves away on a table in the corner. Anticipation bubbled in an overspill in Dan's chest as the phone rang in the centre of the group—one, two, three—

"Chris, my boy!" A thick accented man greeted down the receiver.

Chris smiled. "Hey, Uncle."

"How're you?" he paused, like there was more. "What do you want? This about that Christmas present of yours I've been discussing with your mom?"

"No," Chris laughed. "But we can definitely talk about that after."

"Alright," he chuckled. "What is it then, if not that?"

"Are you still working on those cases you used to a few ago? You know, that paranormal side-job thing."

"The investigation business? Oh, no. I gave that up not long back. Your aunt said I had my head in the clouds too much, which, admittedly, I probably did. I found it hard to focus on much else when I'd spoken to a client," The man's voice halted on the line. "Why?"

"Because I'm really interested in it—all the supernatural stuff—and I've got some questions to ask."

"Well, just because I don't do it anymore doesn't mean I've forgotten everything," There was a rustling on the other end and then Chris' uncle sighed, as though he'd settled. "I've got a bit of time before I have to leave. What do you need to know?" 

Chris looked around to the other three. "I've got my friends here with me, and they've got some stuff."

"Ask away, friends."

Cat cleared her throat, and began talking. "What exactly do you know about the paranormal world? Like, the side to it where people come back."

"Metaphysical resurrection?"

PJ made a face to the group. "What's that?"

"It's an area of philosophy. Proper word for 'where people come back'. Metaphysics; it deals with the idea of reality and existence and proposes the possibility of something beyond just being."

"Right, okay," PJ said. "And what's that have to do with a paranormal universe?"

"It's just a branch of science that deals with it the most. It's not necessarily what I believe, just something you kids might be interested in."

"So what do you believe?" Chris questioned further.

"I believe there is a universe that extends further than ours. Something that takes the idea of general existence and develops on it. We can't define consciousness in anything other than a literal sense because we're very vaguely treading near the true meaning of it. Now, the idea that I have and that many people quite quietly practise is something beyond consciousness. It deals with this possibility of metaphysical resurrection. When you die, your consciousness continues if it feels it must."

"I'm sorry," Chris's face was muddled. "I have no idea what you're talking about. It continues?"

"Yes. Take a glass of water, for example. Hold the glass under the tap, and the water will reach it. Because if it flows without anything getting in the way, it gets where it wants to go. But if you held something between the glass and the water, it would catch it and prevent it from getting inside. It's the same with life. When you die, you die, and your life ends. It's as lucid as water falling into a glass. But if something happens through our lives that acts as that barricade, then we cannot reach death. And our consciousness continues."

"That could happen?" PJ's voice slanted upwards on the final word. "Something could happen that could stop up getting to death?"

"I'm almost certain."

Cat was frowning, lines deep in her forehead. "Give an example."

"Okay," Chris' uncle contemplated in silence. "Murder."

"Excuse me?" Dan choked out the words. _Murder?_

"Murder," he repeated. "If somebody was killed, obviously against their will, they would have unfinished business. And I'm not talking about a car accident or even a bullet in the side of your skull. I'm talking about brutal murder. Something incredibly powerful to bring the person back—or, rather prevent them from going."

"Why would it have to be brutal?"

"Because the person would have to feel enough rage as a connection to something still existing to bring them back to it. It would take a lot . . . "

Cat got up slowly and headed somewhere deep into the library as Chris' uncle continued to talk. 

" . . . And it wouldn't have to be murder, but certainly something as strong. Torture, is a good one. It's why there are often sightings of ghosts in old science labs and mental institutions. Where they used to do horrible experiments."

Dan must have looked completely sick at the surface of the words, because Chris leant down and snuck his hand onto his leg as a means of comfort.

Mental institutions. Torture. Murder. Experiments—

_Skye._

Fuck, he felt so ill. Had . . . ? No, this couldn't apply to their situation. There was no way.

"Why would that happen, though?" PJ continued to talk, for the benefit of Skye and, currently, Dan. "Why would they be connected to the place?"

"Because it's where the thing barricading them from death happened. And being there is a hopeless attempt to destroy said barricade."

"So they want death? They want to reach it?"

"Yes," Chris' uncle answered. "They want peace. Being stuck isn't a nice thing. And it would be accompanied with the memories of what had happened, and why they weren't allowed peace."

"So they could remember? Remember what happened to them?" PJ pushed. Cat had returned with a dusty book and starting flirting through it.

"Yes. They'd be able to remember everything."

"Including how they died?"

"Well, that's the most important. There's no way they wouldn't remember it."

Dan mentally recalled Skye going against these words and, yes, what this man was saying was not proven to be fact. But it all tied up. And, somewhere in Dan, there was a voice whispering to him that he was correct and Skye had been lying.

"Okay," Chris said. "Thanks, Uncle. You've helped a bunch. I'll call you later about the present, yeah?"

"Sounds great, glad I could be of help. Talk to you later, Chris."

Chris hung up and dropped the phone onto the surface, hands coming onto his hair and tugging at the roots. "Holy shit, holy shit," he cursed under his breath. "Skye."

"Don't," Dan swallowed. "Please, just—"

"Littlerock was just shut down permanently in 1979 after the unexplained death of a child," Cat read the words from the book open under her eyes. They were painstakingly familiar.

"Him," Dan could barely get the word out. Pain grazed over his face and carved into his bones. "It's him, Cat. Skye—Phil. Fuck."

"Something terrible happened to him and he remembers it," PJ said slowly. "He was the experiment of 74 to 78. It's why he can't leave the asylum."

"Why didn't he tell me?" Dan's voice crashed and crumbled. He felt like some sort of failure, like he could have done more—There was pain accumulating behind the cool shade of the colour blue and Dan was too busy admiring the azure to realise that there was more than meets the eye. He quite often noticed the bird in a picture of a clear sky, but he'd not been able to do that this time. When it really mattered. When his friend was hurting, he'd looked right past it like a missed cue. He'd forgotten what empathy tasted like and he wanted to smash his fists against the table, pretending it was his ignorance.

"It isn't your fault," Cat leant across and curled her fingers around the back of Dan's hand. He retracted at the warmth of her touch.

"It is," he said, pathetically tragic. "It's my fucking fault."

"Why is it? Were you the one keeping him locked up there?" she retaliated. "No, you weren't. His father owned the damn asylum, Dan, blame him."

"Why would you keep your own son there? And leave him to get killed?" Chris asked, bewildered. "That scared kid in there right now isn't insane. He isn't even close."

"We need to talk to Martyn again," Cat sighed and shut the book. "And yellowwall. Whoever's behind the user, they know stuff. They knew about the project before we did."

"An inside source, maybe," PJ drummed his fingers against the table. "Somebody who worked there?"

_They want death. They want peace._

"The asylum is his barricade," Dan managed to speak a coherent sentence and, for that, he was proud. "The thing stopping him from getting where he needs to go."

"He needs to rid of the memories there," Cat nodded, following along. "He can't be at peace for as long as it stands. We need to—We need to destroy it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it took so long for this update! I’m working on other fantasy fics lol and just never got round to posting this one <3


	12. XII

**xii.**

The group rode up to the asylum, needless to say. Dan had his hud pulled over his head and his hands away in his pocket as they trekked up the path and straight through into the reception.

They didn't waste a breath. They'd attempted some conversation with Dan, something to make him feel better about the mess he believed he'd created, but it seemed to send him in the other direction entirely.

Dan kicked at the rubble littering the reception's floor when they entered. He let his anger seethe out on a fallen board of wood and booted his foot against the side of it. He watched with a locked jaw as it snap into the side of the building, cracking.

"Hey," PJ spoke from behind, and Dan tightened the pressure of his teeth at the surface of a voice. "Wait up a second."

"We haven't got fucking time to wait up, in case you haven't _realised_ ," Dan grumbled, stopping and turning.

PJ hushed him. "Listen."

Dan begrudgingly let silence pulse into the room, softening all the corners of his remaining sanity. He listened hard, following the order, and heard a faint cry.

"What the fuck was that?" Chris blurted, moving back down the reception. The rest followed shortly behind.

"Stop, stop, just—" Cat grabbed and silenced him, not able to finish her sentence before the same sound echoed in again.

Dan's attention trembled and splintered, shot through the roof.

"Was that—"

"Skye," he said the name only once before he broke off into a run. He darted down the reception and behind the dusty front desk, hand sliding against the surface as he slipped behind the wooden entrance. His breath came quick and sharp, slicing through the stillness, and he stumbled through into the supply closet.

The light was dim, as expected, and crates were littered across the floor like they had been the first time he and PJ came. Between the level of light and furniture, Skye cowered under the jagged shape of Bobby's frame. A hospital gown clung to his thin body. 

"Hey!"

Bobby jolted around at Dan's voice and his eyes widened. " _Blood-boy_?" he spat. "The hell are you—"

"Leave him alone," Dan moved closer, steps quick and dangerous. "Do you hear me? Leave him the _fuck_ alone, or I swear—"

"You swear, what?" Bobby clenched a fist around the fabric of Phil's hoodie, sly and threatening.

"Or—" _You can't hurt him. He's dead, too_. "Or I'll tell everyone about you—I'll have your name out of this place and across news articles quicker than you can get on your knees and beg for me not to."

"Dan—" Chris and Cat came tumbling into the room then, PJ dragging himself messily behind them. His eyes hardened and face changed at the sight of the boy inside, and Bobby let a nasty grin swallow up his face.

"Great to see you again, PJ!" he falsified the words out of his mouth. "Phil here has been telling me all about you—How are things with your wrist, then?"

"Just about as good as your face is gonna be when Dan's done with it, if you don't let him go," PJ spat back.

"Oh, _please_ ," Bobby laughed and forced his hand tighter around Skye's throat. "I'm not scared of you."

"Even if you can't feel it, you won't forget about it, you nasty little shit—" Dan moved forward and grabbed the fabric of Bobby's shirt, shoving him into the nearest wall. His head slammed back against the hard stone but his eyes didn't flick to agony for a fraction of a second. The expected reaction didn't faze Dan.

"You're gonna have to try harder than _that_ , blood-boy—"

"You're fucking with the wrong person—You leave him the hell alone, do you understand? You really _are_ mad if you think—"

"Dan," Skye whimpered out his name, and it was the closest he was going to come to crying. He had heaved himself up and was leaning weakly against the other wall. "Stop. Just stop, you can't handle him."

"Listen to the little _queer_ , he knows best," Bobby rasped out and Dan shoved him harder into the wall at the dirty word.

"Say that again," Dan dared, teeth gritted in a fight against his bubbling anger.

"What?" Bobby's voice was as strangled as Dan's. "You dare me? Are _you_ one, too?"

"Yeah," Dan challenged, not letting the admittance faze him or have an effect on his facade—at least not for now. "You got a fucking problem?"

"You bet."

"Then let me know about it," Dan provoked. "Come on—Do your best."

"Dan!" Skye yelled.

"Oh, you want me to?" Bobby's lips drew into a smirk. "You saw what I did to PJ."

"Then do it to me!" Dan growled. "Come on! Break my wrist for it, we'll see who's breathing in the end!"

Bobby lunged down and punched his fist into Dan's lower stomach. Momentarily, there was nothing, as the cold chill of his skin met the healthy temperature of Dan's. But then there was a searing pain in his abdomen and he keeled over, shoving Bobby away in a throttled gasp. His hands gripped at his stomach and he slid down to the floor, groaning and bringing his knees to his chest to minimise the pain.

_Fuck, fuck, why did he think he could—_

"Dan—Oh god, Dan, are you okay?" Skye was right there at his side, almost immediately, cold hands moving to his stomach. He pressed them down over Dan's and shifted so he was kneeling at his side.

Bobby was gone, and Chris was throwing curses loudly after him behind the door. Cat and PJ were behind Skye, hammering some shit in about him being the stupidest person (currently, still) alive with brief intervals of _are you okay?_ They, too, tried to dull the pain, hands on Dan's shoulders and sides and arms but Skye was first, helping and dragging him through it. 

"It hurts," Dan was probably crying. He didn't know. His vision was blurred, cloudy and he couldn't read between the lines as Skye held his hands over the pain because there were no lines. "It hurts so, so bad."

"I know, I know—Just—" Skye moved his arm around Dan's waist and pulled him up, so he fell into him. There was a very, very short period of time in which Dan just didn't care and that period of time resulted in the making of something _more_. Finally, something more. Dan nuzzled his face into the crook of the boy's pale neck and hooked his arms helplessly around his tiny waist. Everything stilled as he breathed in, deep, and closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Skye's lips pushed the word softly into Dan's ear. "I'm so sorry, I never meant for you to get hurt."

"They kept you here," Dan managed, hands on Skye's chest and face hidden away. "You were a patient and—What did they do to you?"

Skye shook his head and hugged Dan tighter, slightly trembling against the boy in his arms. "Please don't, Dan—Please don't make me."

"Tell me," It came from the back of Dan's throat, all broken up and unconvincing. He clenched his fingers tight and chewed on the skin of his cheek so hard, he tasted a wash of blood. _Come on_ , he thought, because he couldn't say it without something going wrong with his voice. _Tell me._

"Bad things," Was Skye's eventual reply, muffled down by a masked cry. "They did bad things to me."

Dan moved an arm around the back of Skye's neck, and winced at the pain of movement in his abdomen. "What kind of bad things?"

Skye shook his head frantically.

"Please," Dan begged. "Please, lovely. Tell me what they did."

The room was deathly silent as the group listened. Skye pushed his face into his hands and shook against Dan, who helped him with a broken, "Experiments?"

"Y-Yeah," Skye whimpered. "On me—Experiments on _me_ , Dan."

"And your father," Dan continued. "He was—He owned this place?"

"He used me," Skye's voice cracked on the centre word and he proceed to hide somewhere deep in Dan's being, cold hands fisting his shirt and black hair brushing up at his chin. "He locked me up so he could use me and made me do stuff I didn't want to do—He wanted to win—he wanted to win science and psychology—a-and he made me feel like shit to get there."

"Did he—" Cat knelt down to Skye, voice soft and questioning, as Dan held him close, roles all reversed. "Was he the one who did it? Did he kill you, Skye? Was it him?"

Skye made a sound that sent a shiver running down Dan's spine, a sound located somewhere alongside a sob.

"He did?" Dan wanted to cry too, as the question spilled out of his mouth.

"N-No, it wasn't him. It wasn't my dad."

"Then, who?" Cat whispered, tangled with hope. She gently rested her hands on his shoulders and squeezed. "Come on, Skye."

"His partner, his colleague. The man he worked with—He gave me too much and—"

"Too much? Too much of, what?" Chris and PJ were kneeling down now, too.

Skye shifted, eyes sad and heavy and his baggage strapped to his back, and pulled up one sleeve of his hoodie. There was an interruption of the perfect white there. Little purple smudges and marks, all dotted around, maybe like an addict.

"Were you—" Cat swallowed, and it was probably the first time Dan had seen her stumble on the edge of tears. "Did they inject you? With bad stuff?"

Skye nodded, whimpered and pushed himself back into Dan's body. Dan wrapped his arms around him in an expression of helpless comfort. _What the fuck else could he do?_

"What was the man's name?" PJ asked, cautious but desperate.

Skye shook his head. "I-I don't know."

Dan ran a hand down his back. "You can tell us. You can tell me—It's me, Skye. I'm trying to help you feel okay."

"I can't ever be okay again. They took it from me," he cried. "They took everything from me and I—I hate them."

"I know," Cat soothed him. "I know you do—Hell, so do I. But you have to have known his name. Your father's colleague. And you have to tell us because we're so close to it now. We're so close to helping you and getting you where you need to go—"

"I don't know his name," Skye insisted, broken. "I promise I don't know his name. Find a document that it could be on somewhere or—"

"A document?" Chris asked. "Where could we find the documents, mate? Where did your father keep them?"

"At home," Skye choked. _Home_. Dan's heart lunged against his ribcage and shattered itself into a million pieces.

"Did Martyn ever know? Was he in on it?" Cat said, with a bit of restrain and disbelief.

"No," Skye insisted. "H-He didn't know. He never found out and neither did my mom. They just—They thought I'd gone missing."

"But—" Chris looked to the others. "But news got out in the end, didn't it? Suppose you wouldn't know because it was after your death but Martyn would have found out. Everybody in the town knows about it, about you, and it's why they don't talk about this place."

"We need to go and ask him for the documents," Cat stood upright. "Fuck, he's bound to have them. Why did he never give them to us? He gave us a bloody picture, of all things."

"Your file," PJ blurted to the boy. "Where's your file, Skye? Your patient file? Why isn't it with the others?"

"That could be at home, too—They took it. When I . . . When I came back, it was gone. A lot of things were. It was just this place, all empty and deserted and silent, and so I hid away in that little room because it's where they used to keep me. So I was away from all the other patients," Skye's voice was so incredibly weighted, it seemed to drag on the room's air. "And I knew nobody could find me there. I knew nobody was ever gonna come back and something was wrong."

"Why are they here, too?" PJ pressed. "The three psychos. What's brought them back?"

"I don't know," Skye shook his head.

"Something must have happened to them, too. Something that brought them back," Cat put her hands behind her head, lips pressed thin in deep thought.

"T-They might have done bad stuff to them, too," Skye suggested, voice jaggedly uneven. "They might have hurt them a bit—Not like me, it was never like me. But a bit."

Dan cupped a hand around the boy's chilled face. "You were the worst?"

He nodded, eyes lidded. "They used me. They used me for four years and then failed and I've come back, stuck. These clothes are terrible and remind me of myself—and I don't—I don't know how to sleep."

"Die?" Chris rephrased, soft. "You don't know how to die? Be at peace?"

Skye gave another nod of confirmation and shuffled closer to Dan, spreading a familiar frost around his body. Dan thought maybe be he was giving some comfort, some safety. He was clinging onto him so tightly, fingers strong around the fabric of his shirt.

"I'm gonna help you," Dan whispered. "I'm gonna help you go to sleep, okay? We all are, we promise—Right, guys?"

The three chorused on an of course.

"We're close," Cat said. "We're close to the end now, we have to be. We know who you are and about the experiments and about your death and about your father—But the police force. Why did they cover it up? Why did they drop the case?"

"I don't know," Skye answered, and Dan realised the words were becoming repetitive. They had to find out quite a lot yet. The boy, existence riddled in blue, then continued on with: "How are you going to help me? Y-You have no way of understanding what's going on here and neither do I—"

"We think we've figured that part out," PJ told him, slow. "We think . . . We think maybe we have to destroy this place. Because your ghost is tied to it and it's your barricade and by destroying it, we would destroy what's preventing you from sleeping."

"So—" Skye moved, looking up at Dan with big eyes. "So you're going to destroy the asylum?"

"Yeah," Dan nodded. There was a trace of denial in him, something that said he was never really going to do it. "Yeah, but not yet. Not until we know everything because you deserve to know everything."

"I second that," Chris said. "They fucked you over and if we're doing this for anybody but ourselves, it's for you."

"There are people who know things that we can talk to," Cat added. "It's not completely a lost cause, all this. We're not in it alone. Take _yellowwall_ for example."

" _Yellowwall_?" Skye echoed, strange.

"He's some guy who messaged us on the forums," PJ said. "He knows stuff. He knew about you and knew about the experiments. He started talking to us after some anonymous guy deleted our ask—I bet he was just some idiot monitor who was also terrified of the name of this place popping up and starting shit on there."

Dan realised that was exactly what anonymous was. Just another one, too shook by Littlerock and its story to talk about it.

"Do you know anything about _yellowwall_?" Chris asked Skye. "Like, who he could be and stuff?"

"I don't think so," Skye didn't sound sure.

Cat caught onto his uncertainty. "What is it?"

"Well, I—I used to have a yellow wall in my bedroom," he muttered the words, like they weren't significant enough. "It's probably nothing."

"No," Dan squeezed on his waist. "It probably is. What do you mean?"

"I used to have one yellow wall in my old bedroom—just one. The bedroom at my home, where Martyn still lives."

"It could still be there," Cat said, suddenly breathless. "We need to check the bedroom out. Surely it's—Surely that means it's Martyn? Yellowwall is Martyn. He wants to help and he has the documents stored up in the house from his father, so he knows this stuff. It's the only logical explanation."

"We have to go talk to him again," Chris nodded along. "This could be the last thing. He might let us see the documents and he could know who killed Skye."

"We should leave," Dan hated the proposal he made then. "My mom's already been nagging at me for spending so much time out of the house. Christmas is coming up and she's big on that, we all are. It takes a lot of preparation as a family. We'll probably put the tree up soon, too."

Skye shuffled back, tumbling off Dan's lap and sitting up on his knees. "Okay."

"I'm sorry," Dan whispered to him. "I'm sorry it's like this. Will you be alright? You know, with that complete asshole that deserves everything he's had—"

"Yeah," Skye didn't sound at all unconvinced. "I'm gonna be fine. If I turn all the lights off, they don't come. For some reason, they just don't. It's why I smashed the bulbs and told you they're never here at night."

"God," Dan let his hand fall around Skye's face and moved his fingers to tuck a thick, black strand away behind his ear. "You're so clever, aren't you? You've been so clever with all of this and you're so amazing for taking them—and this—on your own."

"You're amazing," Skye murmured back. "For helping me. You're all I could have ever asked for and all I ever have."

And Dan wanted to kiss him. Fuck, how he didn't in the spur of the moment was beyond him. Maybe because he had enough self-control to wait. Wait for the right time; for when it was just them, and they weren't emotionally wrecked, they weren't exhausted, and Skye would remember it. He would remember it anyway, probably, but Dan wanted it to be special. Because Skye was special and he deserved only special things.

Dan was going to give him everything he could until he had to say goodbye, and that was a promise. To himself and to Skye. And when it came to saying goodbye, he'd do that right too.

::

Dan arrived home after a while. It took longer than usual, what with the immense pain his stomach resulting in an extent of time on his journey back. His mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen and his father was out with Adrian at football practise. He ran the kids' team.

"I hope you don't expect me to keep thinking this is a normal thing," she said, as soon as Dan passed the kitchen door. He was keeled over just slightly, hand on his stomach, but not enough to be noticeable.

"What?" he asked, innocent.

"You staying out for so many hours a day. You finished school almost four hours ago."

"I've just been hanging out with the group," Dan shrugged, simply. "It's no big deal, mom. God. Let me have friends."

"It is a big deal, actually. I rang PJ's mom—where you told me you'd all been staying—and she said she was worried about PJ, too. Because she hardly ever sees him either," Dan's mother had her arms folded, hip against the kitchen counter.

_Nice one, PJ's mom._

"You better start talking," she continued. "Because nothing you've said adds up to fact."

"We've just been out places. Watching movies and stuff. Mom, I'm fourteen. I want a bit of freedom, if you'd ever so kindly—"

"Don't get snappy with me," she pointed at him, stern. "God help you if you've been hanging around that horrendous asylum."

"Littlerock? Why would you even think that?"

"Because you're constantly asking questions about it, and neither me or you father are stupid enough to think you haven't been round there looking."

"Okay," Dan shrugged, already having soared miles beyond I give a shit. "Okay, I have. We've been round there a lot and been inside, too. What's the big deal?"

"You've been inside?" A ghost rested upon her face, taking up all her colour. She paled and her throat bobbed.

"Yeah, so what?" Dan pushed. "What's the matter? What was I supposed to find?"

You kept him hidden, too. You kept him away from me when I asked you. You're just as bad as everyone else who 'knows nothing'.

"It's dangerous," she told him, clearly uncomfortable at Dan's confident front. "And I don't want my son hanging around there."

_I bet Mrs Lester didn't either._

"Why?" Dan demanded, and his hand gripped the doorframe. "What's gonna happen? You think there's ghosts in there or something? You think there's demons waiting to eat me? Well, they haven't managed to get to me yet—"

"Right, you're on curfew now," Dan's mother angrily silenced him. "Do you hear? You leave here at eight and get back at three thirty. No earlier, no later. School, and then home."

"Mom!"

"Don't, Dan," she snapped. "You're such a stupid child for getting involved with that. We told you to leave it alone."

"I'm not doing anything wrong! You're the one that said there was nothing there! You're the one that said I was wasting my time because I was gonna find nothing!"

Her eyes widened in dread. "What did you find?" she forced, horribly slow. "Dan."

"What does it matter?" he bit back.

"It matters very much! Tell me what you found, what you saw!"

"Why would you think I'd find anything?"

"Because—" she stumbled on the word.

"Because, what?"

She walked over to him, stride quick and riled up, and grabbed his shoulder, pushing herself into his personal space. "Because things happened there that this town refuses to talk about," she pushed the words into his face, her fear coming in cracks of rage. "They didn't clean up when they left there, Dan. They left things, waiting for people to find. What did you see?"

They didn't clean up when they left there.

"There was nothing," he told her. "It was too dark to see anything. Get off me."

She released his shoulder, giving a puff of air, and he moved to head up the stairs as quick as his (possibly) damaged stomach would allow.

"You stay away from there, Dan! The curfew stands!"

"Whatever!" Dan yelled back. "Just know you're as bad them for trying to keep it from me!"

And then he slammed his door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wasn’t sure about this chapter :/ it seems dodgy or off to me, idk. I’m not proud of it at all but I hope you enjoyed <3


	13. XIII

**xiii.**

Dan wasn't ever one to follow the rules. He was barely four-years-old when he heard a man on the TV tell the world: "If they give you lined paper, write the other way."

The quote seemed to apply to every aspect of his life. His current life. He wasn't going to go from fourteen years of not following the rules to fourteen years of following them, especially when he was dealing with the tragic story of a dead kid.

So he skipped school the next day, with the other three. They'd developed a quite inflicting sense of _fuck you all_ since it felt like everyone (everyone with the slightest possibility of remembering) they passed were content on burying the memory of their friend. It was like living, opposing their surroundings.

They knocked on Martyn's door around ten minutes after school had started. He opened it after a couple demands, slowly and with reluctance, like he had done the first time.

"You again," he said to them. "Do you ever even _go_ to school?—"

"Excuse me," Dan shoved past him, forcing him into the wall for room to enter the house. He ran to the stairs and darted up them despite Martyn's yells of disapproval, each one creaking frailly beneath the weight of his body, and started on the first door. He flung it back on it's hinges.

Bathroom.

Cat opened the next, getting there before Dan and—

Master bedroom.

"This one!" Chris shouted from the other end of the hall, standing beside PJ.

Dan and Cat ran down to them and the open door. It was a small bedroom, much smaller and most probably the smallest in the residence. A little bed with blue sheets, made neatly, was set in the corner. There was a chest-of-drawers resting in the other and a series of shelves above it. Placed directly in the centre was a window, open ajar, blue curtains faltering in the soft winter breeze.

The wall behind the bed was yellow.

"Fuck me," Chris cursed, under his breath. "This is—This was _his_ room—"

"You can't be in here!" Martyn clattered down the hallway. He attempted to pull the door closed, but the kids stepped inside, defiant.

"This was your brother's room," Cat turned to him, not at all angry, rather sympathetic. "We know what happened to him, Martyn. What happened to Phil."

"And we know you're _yellowwall_ ," PJ spoke up. "The guy messaging us on the forums."

"Okay," Martyn spluttered, a bit out of breath. He leant against the frame and closed his eyes. "Okay, okay. It's me. I was—I saw you trying to get attention for that fuck of a place and I couldn't just sit back and let it rest. I'm not like everyone else, happy to bury it. I want people to know what happened there but nobody outside of the town does and it's so wrong."

"Your brother died there," Dan's voice shook. Right beside where he stood was the indentation of a measuring chart carved into the doorframe. His mind was still struggling to comprehend that Skye used to sleep in this room, used to live and laugh and play when he just a baby. But he'd grown, right up into a boy with a heavy heart and an even heavier story. It was okay to forget him, apparently. To act like he never existed. But his father had taken him and used him as an experiment and tore him away from the kid with trophies on his shelves. He'd cut up his childhood happiness into tiny pieces over the course of four years and killed him.

He had killed him.

Phil was dead.

Skye was _dead._

And it wasn't a matter of going back, rather just going forward. The water needed to reach the glass and Dan wasn't going to settle for just a couple drops because that wasn't fucking good enough.

"I had no idea it was him," Martyn's eyes brimmed with moisture and he dabbed at them with his sleeve, desperate to keep his emotion intact.

"Who?"

"My father. I didn't—I didn't have any suspicion that he was involved at all. He was as normal as he'd ever been. Phil disappeared and four years went by with nothing and we just—" Martyn shook his head. "We thought that was it. The department had given up and we couldn't do shit about it, not even with the rest of the town on our side. But then . . . "

"Then, what?"

Martyn moved to sit on the small bed. He buried his face in his hands for what felt like a decade but couldn't have been more than ten seconds, and with emotion shading his tone, continued, "Then the news got out of a kid dying at Littlerock. Some guy leaked the information barely three days after it had happened. We questioned my father because he owned the damn place and—and he said he had nothing to do with it. Nothing."

Anger flooded Dan's system. "But?"

"But then, after the information on the death was leaked, other people started to come out with more stuff. All these horrible stories of experiments—torture and mind-control and, somewhere amongst all that, was his name. Phil. My little brother," Martyn let himself shake with an ocean of tears, crashing cries into the air. Cat moved to sit by him and carefully put her hand on his back in a hopeless attempt to ease the pain.

Dan was pacing in the hallway, since they'd let him go, not trying to stop him. He wanted to fucking scream, and hell knows what kept it all in him. His fists were clenched tight at his sides and his breath was horribly ragged. He let himself crouch down and focus on the movement of his chest that reflected the intense action of his mind. He covered his face and closed his eyes.

"Do you know where we can find his documents?" PJ's gentle question floated in from the room.

Martyn replied with something, but it was too dulled for Dan to catch it.

PJ exited the room, quickly leaning down and hugging his arms around Dan. "Come on, mate," he said, soft. "The documents are under his bed. Let's go find who did it."

And so Dan stood, actively protesting against his exhaustion and moving into the larger bedroom. He assumed it to be Martyn's, when PJ leant down on the floor and tugged out a cardboard box.

He dragged it across the floor and lifted it onto the bed. The boys sat down and reach hands in to retrieve a wad of paperwork.

"Fucking twat, Grant is," PJ shook his head, flitting through the paper. "I wish he was still alive."

"He should be glad he isn't," Dan studied the little black words littered across the sheets. He moved fairly quickly but searched through them with a deep concentration.

His finger slowed on the corner of one and he pulled it out from the pack.

"Hey," he slapped PJ's arm lightly. "The official project organisation."

PJ turned his attention to the formal sheet of paper:

_Project 16.8.9.12_

_Developed Hypnosis._

_Subject: P_

_Notes: Development on the state of consciousness. Injected morphine (bordering on intention of addiction) every twelve hours. If necessary, under order of investigation, every eight._

_\- 1974, Lester & Howell._

 

"What the fuck?" PJ stared at the final word on the paper, murky with age. "Howell? That's your name."

"Yes, PJ, I am aware," Dan snapped, confusion fiddling with his sanity. "Why is—How—I don't—"

"Well, it isn't you. This was 1974. Someone in your family?"

"Someone in my family was Grant Lester's colleague?" Dan felt so sick. "And he—he killed him? He killed Skye?"

"Maybe it's just a coincidence," PJ shook his head, sensing Dan's intense shift in attitude.

"Coincidence my fucking arse—Who the hell was it?" Dan couldn't comprehend the idea that he could have possibly been in the same room, at some point in his life, as the man who murdered Skye.

"I don't know, let's just—" PJ was quite obviously deeply affected by the revelation also. "Let's just look for more. Maybe a first name."

So they continued to search. Dan's fingers were shaking and his bones were weak under the tight wrap of his skin. He shifted frantically through papers with I'm sorry sitting comfortably on his tongue. He almost didn't want to find a first name, not in the fear that he hadn't met them. But in the fear that he had. How was he going to react to it? How was he going to tell Skye?

_Oh, hey, mate. You know how you're not breathing anymore because you were tortured to death? Well, a relation of mine is responsible for your three decades of pain. Wanna kiss?_

When Dan and PJ finally scratched the surface on the collection of paper, they found the name. It was deep into the box, hidden somewhere underneath stories of harrowing experiments—we held the subject down against all will—and pushed away into a corner.

Dan thought maybe Martyn hadn't seen the confirmation of identity.

Because the man was alive.

Oh, he was very _much_ alive.

And he wasn't suffering any consequences.

Dan read the name and scrambled off the bed onto weak legs. He stumbled a bit, falling into a dresser and grappling for oxygen.

"Dan," PJ's voice cracked, paper in his hands. "Just—Just sit down, dude. You need to stay calm, okay, you can't—There might be a mistake."

"Him," Dan was crying. He was actually fucking crying—Not like those times he almost had the last week or so, where he'd just made some painful noises and his eyes had blurred over. No, he was actually crying. Tears slicing through his cheeks and coming down over his lip, soaking into the cracked skin. He licked them and tasted salt and choked on the breath captured in his lungs. "It's him, PJ—It's him!"

"It might not be!" PJ squeaked, but he had paled at the information and denial was written on his forehead.

"Bullshit!" Dan yelled, and Chris ran into the room.

"What the hell are you—" His eyes stuttered over Dan's face. "Dan? What's wrong? What have you found?"

He reached for Dan's arm, and Dan shoved him off.

"Don't touch me—" he sobbed, angry, and fell back into the wall.

"What have I—"

"Did you find something?" Cat spoke from the doorway, entering at the sudden noise. "Dan, why are you crying?"

Dan moved and snatched the paper from PJ, shoving it aggressively into her hand. She looked at him for a moment, confused and struck at his behaviour, then stared down at the sheet at the same moment as Chris.

"It's just about some experiment?" she spoke too soon, eyes scanning down. "They did this kind-of stuff on . . . "

Her voice collapsed to nothing, not even a trace of dust, and silence ached louder than any noise ever could. She breathed, quick and pained, and looked at Dan.

"Grant Lester and Peter Howell."

::

"Would you slow the hell down? Dan!"

Dan rode faster than he ever had down the street, cutting corners and battling against the wind like he wouldn't do for anything else. He'd never felt pain like the metaphorical twist of the knife already wedged deep below his ribs. It was the kind-of pain that made him want to throw up, so much so that there was nothing left in his stomach.

"I know you're pissed off but—"

"Pissed off?" Dan threw back over his shoulder to his friends behind him. "I'm gonna fucking kill him!"

"No, you're not!" Cat shouted. "He's your grandfather and—"

"And he killed a fourteen-year-old kid! He killed him!" Dan halted outside the correct house, wheels screeching. He dropped his bike onto the pavement with a clatter and kicked at the frame. He ran down the little path, completely breathless, and ignored the shouts coming behind him as he rang the bell repeatedly.

Chris grabbed him the moment he could, shaking his shoulders. "Stop it, dammit! You can't just act irrationally like this—"

"Irrationally? Excuse me for being a little angry at—"

The door cracked open, interrupting Dan's sentence. Dan's grandfather stood, upright, and smiled warmly.

"Hello, again—"

Dan barged past him, trespassing for the second time that day. His grandfather huffed and stumbled a bit and Dan felt a pang of guilt that quickly faded. He breathed in deep through his nose and—

"What's wrong, lad?" Peter turned to his grandson, eyes worried.

"It was you."

"Dan—" Cat warned.

"Stop," he snapped at her.

"I'm just—"

"I need to do this," he said. "Just let me do it, let me get it out."

She swallowed, reluctant, and brought a hand to the side of her face. Silence.

"What was me?" Peter stood, utterly confused in the corner of the hall.

"The kid who died," Dan didn't wait a beat to chuck the words into the air. "Phil Lester. He was used for experiments in Littlerock from 74 to 78 and you worked there, you _killed_ him—"

"Dan," Peter sighed. "Dan, Dan, Dan. Why are you doing this?"

"What?"

"I didn't kill a little boy. Good God, I would have thought you knew me better than that," he waved his hand around. "Yet here you are, storming into my home and making all kinds of accusations."

"It's the truth!" Dan spat.

"Officially, I was working in the department at the time."

"Officially, you were working in the _asylum_ at the time," Dan reached into his pocket and shoved a piece of paper under his grandfather's nose. "See that? Your name! Right beside Grant Lester's!"

Peter gently pushed the boy's hands away. "That could very easily be forged."

"Not really," PJ defended the evidence.

"Tell me the truth," Dan's fingers were shaking around the paper in his hands. "Just tell me the truth."

"This is the truth."

"Granddad!" he yelled. "You killed him, just admit it!"

Peter rocked back on his heels and took a breath that acted as his first sign of defeat. He rested his hand against the wall and moved to sit down on the stairs. He drummed his fingers against his knees and closed his eyes, head tilted into his lap.

"I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out," he managed, choked.

Dan's knees shook. It was true. He knew it was, but the confirmation was agonising.

"It was an accident," Peter breathed, barely forming the words. "We never meant for anything like that to happen."

"We? As in, you and Grant?"

Peter nodded, and began. "I worked closely with the police department for a long time, even before I was officially employed. My brother was chief before I was and our family was always closely entwined with them. In 74, I started working at the station in the middle of town. I'd heard Grant's name around because he owned Littlerock and was, apparently, a very respectful gentleman with acquaintances all over. When he asked me to start working at the asylum, we'd been talking for a good few months and developed a deep friendship. We connected over science and psychiatry and a lot of interests we shared as children. I studied a lot of the mind when I was at school, but I never acted on my interests.

"Anyway, he offered me a job as his partner in a series of experiments. He gave them a collective name that I forget, it wasn't important enough to remember really, but I knew from the beginning that we would be working on hypnosis. I agreed, and said I would work between the department and the asylum. I became connected to both," he paused to gather his thoughts. "Phil was . . . He was such a kind boy. Before we started on the project, he had so much happiness, it would just hit you right in the face the moment you met him. He'd laugh at everything and keep his worries to himself, in fear of bothering other people."

"You killed him," Dan spat, and Cat flinched out of the corner of his eye.

"It was an accident, Dan. The experiments got out of control—We were injecting him with morphine every twelve hours or so because we didn't want him to feel it and he became addicted. Unintentionally, obviously. But it spiralled out of control. It all became such a mess—I convinced the department to continue staying quiet about his disappearance—and one day I injected him and he just—He died," Peter's voice cracked on the final word. "I found him. I found him dead in the room with Grant later that day and, my God, I'd never felt anything like it. He kept going on and on about how I'd murdered his son—the staff that were on a protocol to remain inside were let out and somebody spilled about Phil's death. It was everywhere, all over the front pages in the town. We hired people to assure it never went further than here and, as far I know, it never has."

"So your names remained protected when a kid lay dead on the floor of an asylum?" Dan was crying again. "You killed him, both of you in reality, and nothing happened? You had no punishment?"

"No," Peter murmured. "The department covered for us. I was still head, really. Any information that came about, I denied on behalf of Littlerock. And eventually, people got bored."

"Where's his patient record? His file?"

"Upstairs," Peter took a breath. "You can have it. It's no use to me, to anyone. But it might give you some closure on all your mystery."

Dan was light-headed, so he leant against the wall as PJ asked:

"Why did you ever do it?"

Peter took a long breath.

"I can't answer that. I don't know if I even know the answer," Pause. "Phil Lester's case in Littlerock is the biggest scandal this town will ever see. And as much as it feels like everybody let him down, nobody's ever stopped thinking about him. Nobody ever could."


	14. XIV

**xiv.**

The next month and a half passed in a haze. Snow started to fall a few days after Dan had stopped crying and found it in him to admit the truth about his grandfather to Skye. The horrible news pulled on the spaces between them and drew them closer together somehow, so that their souls overlapped and everything fell into place. Dan gathered some snow in his hand one day and raced through the asylum to show the boy, who looked at it with sparkling eyes but made no pointless attempt to touch it.

Dan proceeded to tell him all the details about Christmas in his house. The fact that the tree touched the ceiling and the floor was always littered with presents and his mother made the best pieces of shortbread scattered in sugar. The fact that the lights they strung up outside the house flickered through an assortment of colours that illuminated on the bed of white.

As the season softened the edges of the town, the group of friends made a plan to destroy the asylum. At the centrepiece was Skye's lighter, and Dan went to bed every night with a cloudy image of flames at the front of his mind. He tried not to think about the word _death_ , telling himself it wasn't really death at all.

Rather just peace.

Dan kissed him for the first time late on a Wednesday night at the start of December. They were buried underneath blankets, making shadows with their fingers in the light from the torch. It was safe, calm, and the air in that room knew them better than it knew anything else. It was their room, their spot.

"I've never kissed anybody before," Skye admitted, at the surface of the proposal 'we could kiss if you wanted'.

"No?" Dan looked at him softly. "Not even when you were Phil?"

Skye shook his head. "Have you?"

"Yeah. A couple times," Dan licked his lips. "Not really anything important though. It was the same girl I thought I was totally in love with when I was, like, twelve. Then PJ kissed her and it all went out the window."

"Wow," Skye smiled. "Didn't see PJ as the type."

"Neither did I," Dan laughed. He shifted in the little corner of the room and wrapped an arm around Skye's waist, brushing some of his hair out of his eyes and giving him a smile that felt like a secret.

"Are we going to, then?" Skye asked, a bit frightened. "I want to, like—I want it to be you. My first and my last."

The words were so tragic.

"I want to be, too," Dan said. "If you promise to remember it."

"I will," Skye slipped his cold hands around Dan's neck and Dan moved, nuzzling their noses together so that the boy giggled, and his heart seemed to settle. Dan let him turn his head just slightly, and push their lips together in the softest of kisses.

His stomach fluttered at Skye's action, and they remained in the same proximity, Dan breathing on his lips, until they closed the space between them with another kiss. It was a bit longer, lasting long enough for Skye to thread his fingers through Dan's brown hair and mutter his name against his mouth. Then, they broke apart just slightly, and Dan whispered, "What is it, lovely?"

Skye kissed across Dan's nose and rested a hand on his chest. "I fell in love with you here."

Dan slept beside Skye that night, all tangled up in his chilled frame. When he woke, he was laying against Skye's chest, and he looked up to meet his eyes.

"Hello," Skye whispered, fond. "You're probably gonna be late for school if you don't get going."

And, fuck, Dan almost was. But as he stumbled through the school's doors, looking like complete shit with bags under his eyes and a tire deep in his bones, he'd never felt _happier_. He didn't think it was possible to feel half the happiness that he did. Because it was winter and it was snowing and Christmas was around the corner and Skye was doing just fine.

Dan thought that maybe 'doing just fine' was the best he was gonna get. But they'd settle for that. They'd settle for a whisper of happiness that hung with the possibility of being misheard.

When they wrote poems in English that same day, he wrote about happiness. And he tried, with everything in him, not to use Skye's name at least once every verse. Instead, he grinned against his hand at the thought of the boy, and wrote _I'm doing just fine_ between the lines of his notebook.

And the thing was, it didn't really develop any more than that. Dan and Skye kissed a lot, often just in the spur of the moment, with the executor slipping back and giving a quick, "I'm sorry." Dan's was usually accompanied with, "I just couldn't help it" and Skye would smile, a bit embarrassed. But it developed no further than kisses and finger-links and faces buried in necks.

Dan got used to the cold, while Skye got used to Dan staying the night. It was great for the both of them because Dan was able to sleep close enough, and hold Skye in his arms.

He realised how small he was the first time he did that.

::

"You're a bit like a penguin."

"Better than a polar bear."

"You think?"

"Yeah," Skye laughed, as he showed Dan the baby foxes he'd found on the security camera. "They're cuter."

"Good," Dan said from behind him, arms around his small waist and head resting on his shoulder. "It was my intention. You're very cute. And cold and brave."

Dan could feel Skye's smile as he murmured, "Don't know about that."

"I do," Dan said. "Now show me the foxes, little penguin."

::

As it were, Dan felt everything for Skye he was ever going to feel for another person. And he felt it as an underdeveloped fourteen-year-old with a too-big interest in history and protecting the things he loved.

::

"There's a lot of spaces, don't you think? In the world and in ourselves. Places we don't know how to fill."

"I don't think we'd fill them even if we knew how."

"I would. I'd fill all the spaces for me and for you," Dan said. "Because there's a lot when you combine us."

"There is indeed," Skye agreed, and reached over to lace their hands.

"There we go," he said. "I filled one for you."

::

He left before Christmas. The cold afternoon of December 19th, it was, and it felt like everything they'd ever amounted to came to that day. Dan would have it carved into his bones, marked as:

_The day I lost you but the day I knew you were finally okay._

"Why am I so damn nervous?" PJ jumped between his two feet in the warden's office. "Fuck, fuck. Fuckity fuck."

"PJ, shut up," Cat rolled her eyes. "You really are an annoying little shit, aren't you?"

"You're nervous because we're burning the place down, mate," Chris said, and Dan winced at the words. Skye wrapped their hands together.

"It's okay," he promised, running his thumb along Dan's fingers. "I'm gonna be okay."

"You are," Dan smiled, just for him. "Where are you—Where are you gonna sit? Where do you want to be when you leave?"

"Here," Skye ran his finger along the cupboard they had hid in once.

"Okay," Dan's heart hurt. "That sounds like a good idea."

PJ approached the boy from behind Dan, mask weighing in his hand, and gave it to him. "This is for you," he said. "I never gave you one, so—There you go."

Skye took it carefully and smiled.

"Bad atmospheres," PJ quipped. "You don't know how many you're gonna encounter on your little journey. Just close your eyes and have fun. Find your way home."

Skye moved forward and threw his arms around PJ. The embrace lasted for a few seconds before he whispered his gratitude, and PJ hugged him back. Cat smiled at them from the other side of the room and nudged Chris. Before Dan really knew what was happening, they were wrapping their arms around Skye and pulling on Dan's wrist for him to join.

"Thank you," Skye said, muffled around the four other bodies. "Thank you so much—I love you all."

He sounded so _okay_. So relived and so excited, almost.

The group moved back from him, and he turned to bury himself back into Dan's arms.

"I was happy here," Skye said, right in his ear. A shiver ran up Dan's back. "I just wanted you to know. You made me so happy."

"I'm glad, little penguin," Dan chewed down hard on his lip to prevent tears. "I'm so, so glad."

And then he kissed the side of his face and squeezed Skye tighter. Something buzzed around them, closing in, and there was a bit of a shuffle in the room.

"Come on then," Chris said, careful. "We gotta do this now, if we want to do it at all."

Dan shook completely, and he let his hands drag down Skye's arms as he released him. _I don't want to leave you, let me be selfish and never have to let you go_ —

"Dan," Skye grabbed his wrist, and the blue in his eyes spelt out the letters of desperate. "Say you love me. Say it."

Dan wanted to trace the words into his sickly pale skin.

"I love you."

"I love you, too," Another kiss. Softer, safer, sealing their promise of forever. Skye hugged Dan so tight that the cold seeped and settled down into his soul. "I have to go now, Dan."

"I know," Dan stood back and took the mask, opening it and carefully bringing it down over Skye's face. Then, he patted inside the cupboard and watched Skye climb inside.

"Don't you get forgetting about me," Dan poked his ribs. "I know you've felt none of what we've done but you can't forget it."

"I have felt it," Skye pressed a finger to the left side of his chest. "Right here. Everything we've ever had is right here."

Dan put his hand over the boy's motionless chest. "Get some sleep now, okay? You deserve it."

"Dan," Cat pressed. "We really gotta go, I'm sorry."

"Okay," Dan rushed and leant up to hug the boy once more. He moved back and slowly closed one door of the cupboard. "They can't hurt you anymore. Do you hear me? They can't hurt you anymore. You're okay now."

"I'm okay now," Skye's face was covered by the mask and he pulled it down tighter over his face. His fingers shook a bit.

"Right," Dan glanced to his friends in the doorway. "You're—I love you. Thank you."

"Thank you. You couldn't have loved me better if you tried."

Skye stretched his hand down and linked their pinkies. He shook them, once, then settled back into the cupboard as Dan whispered, "Merry Christmas, Skye."

"Merry Christmas, Dan."

And then Dan shut the door.

The asylum crackled and burned in an ocean of orange that stood defiant in the white snow that day. Dan broke down only when they watched at the end of the street, hidden, as people came rushing in a moment away from their Christmas cheer to point and gaze at the flames like _fuck, Littlerock's burning_ and Chris slipped the lighter into his back pocket.

"Fuck you," PJ said under his breath, and his eyes were on the building. "And take him home."

Cat snuck her arms around Dan in a loose hug. "You're okay, yeah?"

Dan nodded and sniffed, wiping his nose on his thick jacket sleeve. "I'm okay."

He was, strangely.

"Good. Because no damn doubt he is," Cat smiled. "Peace, remember?"

 _Sweet dreams, lovely_.

"Peace," Dan sealed.

PJ got off his knees from the floor and patted Dan's shoulder. "Let's go. We shouldn't be here."

"Yeah," Chris agreed. "Christmas party at my place, remember?"

Dan smiled at the reminder. He stood to his feet and let the cool breeze take him away for a moment. He closed his eyes and counted three breaths— _we were here_ —and then opened them.

Orange melted with the blue of the sky.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it’s come to end. I loved, loved, LOVED writing this fic. I’ve had an absolutely amazing journey and I hope some of you have felt anything at all whilst reading it. Thank you so much, I love you.x


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